


Imperfections 2: Believing in Fairy Tales

by Dasha (Dasha_mte)



Series: Imperfections [2]
Category: Monk - Fandom, The Sentinel, The X-Files, due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-26
Updated: 2011-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sentinels are disappearing all up and down the West Coast. This is not a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperfections 2: Believing in Fairy Tales

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Canada. It was necessary for plot reasons that Canada not employ a guide accreditation program. Although normally I loathe portrayal of an exotic other based on national or ethnic lines, I also normally loathe AUs. My standards have gone down considerably lately.
> 
> This is still an AU. Ahem. Also, now it's a multiple crossover. Sorry.
> 
> Also--I almost forgot to mention--some mystical bits leaked in. I tried to keep it to a minimum, but, well, accidents happen.
> 
> Martha was very supportive and Kitty is an excellent editor, but neither of them is responsible for my ongoing rule-breaking. Or--no. Do blame them. It's all their fault. I was hardly involved at all. Wasn't even there, really....
> 
> Disclaimer: Not my characters.

"You're, um, you're sure you're ok with this, right?" Simon asked.

"We're fine. Well, unless Sandburg finds out. In which case, *your* ass is grass." Jim shrugged cheerfully, trying to ignore the small knot in the pit of his stomach.

"I'm not taking the rap for this."

"Then you'd better be discrete."

Simon pulled over and Jim realized they'd arrived. Monk's townhouse was in a fashionable neighborhood overlooking the harbor. Very nice. There were two black and whites and Sharona's station wagon parked along the street. He could identify the house by the small cluster of people standing impatiently on the steps.

"Nobody gone in?" Simon asked as he came up the sidewalk.

"Just me," Sharona answered. "I came right out." She looked calm and completely together, but Jim could smell her fear. "Where's Blair?"

"He's taking a final," Jim answered. "His last one, and he's going to finish it. It's ok. I'll be fine."

Sharona caught Jim's arm and planted herself in front of him. "Not by yourself," she said. "I don't care if 'everybody does it sometimes.'"

Jim sighed, all his arguments folding under him. Sharona Fleming was one of a very short list of people in a position to have figured out the grim details of his life. "I worked crime scenes with Him," Jim whispered. "I can do this one by myself."

Sharona smiled a smile completely without cheer or amusement. "Then I guess you're flexible enough to work a scene with me."

Jim didn't bother to argue. He went in first, Sharona hovering at his elbow, Simon two steps behind. He paused in the doorway and listened. It was unlikely that Monk was, for example, hiding in a closet or the back of the pantry, but not impossible. He wasn't, though. Except for the appliances, the place was quiet.

"Can you smell anything?" Sharona asked.

"Not much. He uses a lot of charcoal. I can smell you from when you were in here before, but just barely." Like most guides, she had a very low scent impact. "I can smell Adrian." Clove and witch-hazel aftershave, mild mint gum he used to combat odor issues out in the world. Jim stepped further in, breathing slowly, dimly aware that he was on the edge of a zone, amazingly unafraid of it. There had been someone else here, but they were as ephemeral as a guide.

Jim checked the bathroom. It didn't take a sentinel to tell it hadn't been used that morning. The bedroom--

"There, see!" Sharona said miserably. "He would never leave the bed like that. Never!"

The bed was a mess, the sheets tangled, one of the pillows on the floor. Jim donned a vinyl glove and gingerly picked up the sheet. It smelled sweet. Too strong to be a fabric softener, even if a sentinel would use one. "Sharona, did--" Jim broke off, surprised. It was like a blanket had dropped between him and the world. His senses clicked down to almost nothing, leaving the room looking dim and washed out, completely odorless, silent--he had to turn to look to see if Sharona and Simon were still with him, and they were, but Jim could hear no heartbeats, feel no heat from them. It was a little frightening.

Then he saw Monk. Strangely, he had decided to turn into a small, brown fox, but probably that wasn't any of Jim's business. He was standing beside the window, head down, teeth bared, frightened and angry. "Where have you been?" Jim asked him.

"Where has who been?" Simon asked impatiently.

"Monk. He's--" The room tilted abruptly, dumping Jim on his ass. Monk was still there, looking around nervously, but he wasn't alone. There was a raccoon beside the fox now, and a small bobcat with tufted ears. "Stop that," Jim said. "You're going to shed all over everything."

***

Blair had finished the first essay question when his beeper went off. At the front of the room, Dr. Collins looked up in irritation, and Blair shrugged at him apologetically before looking down at the tiny screen. Simon's cell number followed by 911.

Blair paused to check that his name was on the blue book and took it to the front of the room. Collins was glowering now. Blair tried not to look disrespectful, but at this point he didn't care about the test any more. Jim would not have forgotten about this exam. It had to be an emergency. An emergency bad enough that it was Simon calling and not Jim at all. Blair fairly ran from the room.

A police car was waiting outside. It took him to St. Joseph's Hospital. On the way, he called Simon's cell number. The short trip was enough to get the story--Jim had gone down at a crime scene. Nobody had a clue why. It was more than twenty minutes later, and he was still unresponsive.

Simon met him outside the emergency room and took him straight to the treatment area--a feat Blair couldn't have achieved by himself without AG(A) credentials and a card with Jim's picture on it. To his relief, Sharona was there, holding one of Jim's hands, tracing shapes on his palm with piece of ice. A nurse stood to one side, talking into a phone on the wall. Jim was--

God, Jim was still. Blair couldn't even see him breathing. "Sharona, what's happening?"

Sharona flinched, wouldn't meet his eyes. "Some kind of chemical exposure. We don't know yet. His CNS is depressed. Blair, it looks like an uptake distortion response to me, but he's not fighting it at all, and I can't get him to respond to me."

"Yeah, ok." He nudged Sharona away and took her place in the metal chair. "Jim? Hey?" Blair took the cold, damp hand and squeezed it hard. "We need to talk, Jim. Wake up."

Jim's eyes opened slightly and then drifted shut again. According to the monitor, Jim's heart was far too slow, and Blair couldn't find a pulse in the wrist. But Jim was hearing him. He had to engage Jim's mind somehow, get his attention. Jim was a powerful sentinel, he could overcome whatever was sedating him, but he had to try.

"Ellison! Wake up, right now." The only response was a slight movement in Jim's hand. "Don't ignore me! Wake up, damn it."

He saw Jim's blue eyes again. They stared out at Blair in confusion and hurt. Blair's resolve faded. "Jim, I'm not mad at you. You haven't done anything wrong. I know you're tired and what I'm asking is hard, but you have to. Jim...."

Jim's eyes closed. Talking just wasn't working. Pain? By the book, pain was clearly the best shot, especially since Jim still had so little pain management training. But there was no way. No way. Jim couldn't cope with his guide hurting him. There was no reason in the world. It would be just too much.

Fear, then? Jim could hear; scare him, get some adrenalin moving? He had a pretty good idea of what would do it--'wake up now, or I'm leaving.' No doubt that would get Jim's attention, but there was no question of trying it. Yet, being reasonable wasn't getting Jim's attention. He leaned closer and whispered, "Jim, I *know* you can beat this if you really tried. Simon said you barely smelled it, there's just not that much in there. You're embarrassing me, you know." Nothing.

Blair wondered how much it would take to panic himself. Not a lot, at this point. This was also a dirty trick, but at this point it wasn't a dishonest dirty trick. "Jim, you don't understand. If you don't come out of this on your own, the doctors are going to start talking about stimulants. Jim, man, I know the statistics, and you do *not* want to take your chances on them getting the dosage right! Quit playing around, partner. I need you to wake up. I know it's hard, but you can do it if you try, and I need you to try." Blair removed the oxygen mask and held his hand where Jim could smell it. The fear was real enough.

Jim's eyes opened, wider this time, and found Blair's face. Blair thought about Jim going into a coma versus Jim's body responding to a very modest stimulant by reacting like he'd overdosed on speed. Once there were uptake distortion responses going on, even caffeine was iffy, let alone the stimulants Sentinels couldn’t ignore. Doctors never understood sentinels as well as they thought they did.

Oh, yeah. That did it. Blair had a nice panic worked up now. "Jim, sit up. Sit up, come on. Please."

Jim seemed almost too disoriented to figure out how to sit. He struggled weakly, managed to push himself upright. Blair kept him from falling back. The nurse, standing by Sharona in the corner, nodded, and Blair prodded Jim some more. "Good. That's so good, Jim. Now I need you to breathe for me, nice big breaths. Focus on me, pay attention. I need you to be awake."

"'m up," Jim mumbled. "Patronizing little shit. I'm up." He tried to lie down again.

Blair held him upright and was as irritating as possible. He recited platitudes about cooperating with the guide, and when Jim growled a miserable curse, lectured him on manners.

The nurse took Jim's blood pressure and temperature, and then handed Blair a cold, wet cloth to wipe Jim down with. That was the final straw, and Jim began a continuous grumble, resentful and petty and not quite lucid. It lasted about three minutes, according to the institutional clock on the wall.

"What's goin' on?" Jim said, after his grumble had petered out.

"Hey? You in there?"

"I don't feel good, Chief."

"Yeah, I bet not." Blair put the damp cloth down, pulled Jim into his arms. "You got exposed to some shit at a crime scene. It messed you up pretty good, but you're handling it."

"This is handlin' it?"

"Yeah, you're doing great. Keep talking to me. What were you doing?"

"Monk's gone. Sharona got there this morning, he wasn't there. He's always there."

Monk hardly ever went out without his guide, and he never broke routine. Blair could see why everybody panicked. He looked up, but Sharona was gone. Her sentinel was missing? Crap. Blair couldn't imagine....

He kept Jim talking for the next half hour. It wasn't a particularly coherent or fast moving conversation, but Jim seemed lucid for the most part. Every ten minutes, a nurse came in and took Jim's vitals and sometimes a little blood. The third time she left, Jim swung his legs over the side of the bed and leaned toward Blair, the most animated he'd been yet. "Oh--God. Blair, I saw *animals*," he whispered urgently.

"Where?"

"At Monk's place."

"There were animals?" Monk just didn't strike Blair as a pet kind of guy, certainly not a guy who'd have pets that scared Jim.

"No! I *saw* animals." Jim closed his eyes. He seemed defeated and desperate. Blair wondered if this was a new chemical reaction. "Blair, I saw animals."

Blair hopped up onto the bed beside him. "You saw animals? What, you hallucinated animals? You dreamed animals?"

"It's what they say happens when sentinels lose it. They see animals. They say, those two years Monk never left his house, he was talking to some kind of pet bird and there wasn't any bird there. Blair, you have to know about this...."

"Jim, that's just a... an old wives' tale. I mean, ok, yes, sometimes sentinels see animals. But it doesn't mean anything. It just happens sometimes. It doesn't mean anything."

"But they say--"

"They're wrong, Jim. Come on. You remember all the shit you heard about sentinels before--was any of it true? Really? You got into some kind of drug, something they used to subdue Adrian. It knocked you out and gave you some bad dreams. That's all."

Simon came in then. Blair waved at him tiredly before he remembered the near miss they'd just had. He opened his mouth to ream Simon out, but Jim caught Blair's arm and shook his head. "Anything on Monk, sir?"

"Not on him specifically, but our problem is bigger than we thought. The Pacific district has lost five sentinels in the last six weeks."

"Lost?" Blair repeated, horrified.

Simon sighed. "A customs inspector and a forensic sentinel from California, two Oregon search and rescue workers, and a high-profile Canadian tracker. That we know about."

"Have we got anything?" Jim asked.

"The MOs don't match--they range from a kidnapping in broad daylight as one of the rescue sentinels came out of a deli to vanishing in the night with a packed suitcase leaving a note saying, 'I need a vacation.'"

"That's awful," Blair whispered.

"Nothing?" Jim asked.

"Just to get worse: they found the forensic investigator dead three days later from some kind of massive allergic reaction. There hasn't been a sign of any of the others."

When Jim was released they went back to the PD, not home. It didn't thrill Blair, but if sentinels were being abducted, then he had a vested interest in finding out everything he could about what was going on.

Rhonda handed a stack of faxes to Simon as they walked in. Simon turned to Blair. "Do you mind joining us? We could use an expert in sentinels, and I don't think Sharona is up to it."

Blair had been spending afternoons at the PD twice a week since November, but 'at the PD' usually meant out somewhere with Jim doing something Jim couldn't do alone. Since Blair wasn't accredited, it was very close to an OSHA violation, but the law didn't require a licensed guide be in Jim's presence all the time and anyway Rainier--in the person of Jack Kelso--was closely supervising Blair. Personnel had just handed Jim a bunch of waivers to sign. All of which meant that even after almost two months getting oriented to police work, Blair still hadn't spent much time at Jim's desk or with his coworkers.

In Simon's office, the three of them were joined by a young detective named Henry and the head of forensics, Jim's ex-wife. "Carolyn, have you got anything off that sheet at Monk's yet?"

Carolyn shot a pitying glance at Jim. "We're not finished yet. Sam says it looks like some kind of sedative cocktail, but she's having trouble identifying the less common constituents. That's all we've got--no prints, no fibers. The place was spotless." She sighed.

They got to work, sorting out the stack of pages faxed over from eight different agencies. No one had figured out there was a pattern going on until less than forty-eight hours ago--if, in fact, they were all connected--and nobody had a working analysis of the situation or even a coherent organization of data. Simon started making a chart, age, sex, location, employer. They had three women and three men, including Monk.

Blair found himself in possession of the pages on the forensic sentinel from San Francisco. Her name had been Cassie Wells. The grainy black and white picture showed a beautiful woman with light hair and dancing eyes. The nine pages of her employment file had arrived backward and one of them was unreadable. Her medical file was apparently incomplete, although there was just so much of it, it might be mixed up. The forensic report on her apartment showed no useful evidence, her guide reported nothing unusual in the days leading to the disappearance, her neighbors saw nothing. It was scary, to hold so much detail of this woman's life in his hands and still realize they had no idea why she died.

"Wow," Carolyn said suddenly. "The missing Canadian--it's The Canadian."

"You're kidding," Jim said, looking at her for the first time.

"No, apparently he was on his way to hold a tracking seminar in southern California. Disappeared between planes while his entourage was getting food."

"What do you mean, 'The Canadian?'" Blair asked.

"There's this guy," Simon said, "Practically a law enforcement legend. He can find anybody, anywhere, with a trail that's several days cold."

"They say he once tracked a lost poodle twenty eight blocks in downtown Chicago," Carolyn said.

"You're kidding," Blair said. Hardly anybody could track in urban areas--the input was just too overwhelming. If you could avoid a sentinel in a city for an hour, he'd never find you.

"Apparently he's quite a character," Simon added. "He's technically RCMP, but he takes 'impossible' assignments all over the United States and Canada--and twice he's been sent to Russia. He travels with an American-trained guide, a formal American liaison, and a wolf."

"Wow," Blair said. "How do you lose somebody like that in an airport?"

"You know," Jim said, "I've got Mabry the Customs Agent. He was also considered pretty hot stuff. Ninety-ninth percentile, all five senses, and that's compared to other sentinels."

"Wells had the best record in San Francisco, apparently. I don't know how they rate forensic sentinels," Blair said slowly, "but apparently she was a local phenomenon."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Simon said happily, "we might have us the beginning of a pattern. Oh. Sandburg, I think I have your autopsy." He paper-clipped several sheets together and passed them to Blair. "It doesn't say anything useful, though; systemic allergic reaction, trigger unknown."

There were pictures too. The eager eyes were swollen shut. There were welts--layers of hives, the kind that come with a couple of days of raging hypersensitivity. It looked like rings of smaller rings, like drawings of pearl necklaces on her skin. It must have hurt. "This is the part that doesn't fit. Whatever they want these people for, Cassie Wells was a bad bet."

"What do you mean?" Simon asked.

"I'm not sure everything's here, but I'm counting at least six hospitalizations a year. She was a touchy sentinel. Her senses were stable, but her body was a mess. Whatever they're doing, she can't have been worth the risk, the effort."

"Blair, I'm in the hospital more than that."

"Yeah, but picture it happening if you'd been identified in diapers, had the best training all your life, not to mention a competent guide. This woman was fragile for years. There was no way...."

"Maybe they don't know very much about sentinels?" Simon suggested.

"No, but see, they did!" Blair said, passing back one of the pages. "They treated her with cortisone shots. She was loaded with it when she died."

"Yeah. So? They had a first aid kit."

"For a non-sentinel there would have been epinephrine in there somewhere. Probably pretty early. But nine sentinels out of ten--their bodies know the difference between fake adrenalin and the real thing. Not only does it not work, but usually they react to it, the kind of systemic allergic reaction that kills people. Somebody worked on her for a day or two, and they did the right things."

"Except let her go," Carolyn said sourly.

"You're saying it's a guide," Jim whispered.

"Maybe. Or a guide school drop out. Or a doctor." Although even some doctors made mistakes. "It's somebody who knows sentinels. And someone who didn't know enough about this one."

"What do you think they want them for?" Carolyn asked, and Blair remembered that she was Monk's boss.

"I don’t know. You can't force a sentinel to work--they couldn’t for very long under such stressful conditions anyway." A number of other options flitted though Blair's mind--to horrible to mention. Too horrible to even think.

They sorted out the last of the bundle of paper into neat folders, and then Blair collected Jim, who had been quiet and slow-moving for the last half hour. "Come on, we're going home." The loft *was* home, he thought as he collected Jim's keys. Originally, he'd thought he'd just sleep over occasionally, when Jim was having a bad time or when they wanted to do some practice after dinner. Somehow, though, it had always seemed more convenient to stay, and a few weeks ago Jim had actually suggested that Blair drop the housing contract at the end of the semester. He'd be an employed guide in the new year; he could save up for a place of his own, eventually. In the meantime, there was a lot Jim needed to learn. Living together would give them more time for that.

Blair, who'd found that he didn't sleep very well staring at the concrete block walls of his dorm room and wondering if Jim was ok and getting enough rest, had been relieved. It wasn't all that unusual. A lot of sentinels and guides lived together. Even if one or the other was married, they tended to live close by.

Blair drove the truck. They could pick up his car from the U tomorrow. Jim closed his eyes and tipped his head back, not paying attention to Blair's driving. "You feeling all right, man?"

"Yeah, fine." A lie. Jim ought to know better.

"So what was the deal this morning?"

"Monk was gone. You know with a scene like that, you have to get a sentinel in before everybody else."

"No, why didn't you call me?"

"You were taking a test. I didn't want to bother you."

"Yeah? Well, guess what; I left the test early anyway, only instead of going to a crime scene I wound up at the emergency room."

Jim glanced at him, then turned his face to the window. "Sorry to bother you."

"You almost died, do you understand that? Do you have a fucking clue? You were about twenty minutes away from a respirator, Jim. Unless they decided to go in for stimulants. Jeeze."

"Blair. I can't apologize for doing my job."

"I'm not asking you to apologize. I'm asking you to cut me a break!" Blair took a deep breath. "I’m not mad--"

Jim looked at him in astonishment.

"Ok. I am mad. I'll get over it. But how did it not occur to any of you that something happened in that house to make a sentinel disappear?" Jim shuddered, and Blair felt some of his anger seep away. "It doesn't matter. I'm done with school, now. There's no more excuse for you to be by yourself."

"Gonna babysit me all the time, Chief?"

"Until you settle down a little more, yeah, Jim, I am."

"What... what do you think that cocktail did to Monk? Do you think he made it?"

"If he didn't panic, he would have fought the drugs. It might not have kept him out for very long."

Jim grew quiet again. He spent the rest of the ride with his eyes closed, and on the way up to the loft he stumbled on the stairs. The second time, Blair stepped up and put an arm around his waist. Jim was heavy and shivering.

"You gonna let me sleep?" Jim asked as Blair lowered him onto the couch.

Blair pressed his fingers to Jim's wrist. The pulse was strong and a little fast. "Yeah, you can sleep." But he didn't think Jim would be able to.

There was beef broth in the freezer. Blair heated it up with a little left over rice and brought it to the couch in a cup. "No," Jim whispered. He was holding very still.

"Headache?"

"Yeah."

Blair exchanged the soup for a cold towel and sat on the end of the couch, easing Jim's head into his lap. Jim cursed softly. "I know," Blair said. He took Jim's hands and found the pressure points for headache, but Jim shuddered when Blair squeezed the soft flesh. "No?"

"No. Sorry." Jim tried to smile. "Is my head going to explode? Just that I'd like some advance warning...."

"That's what the towel is for. Jim, do you think you could slow your breathing down? In nice and slow, hold it until you count to four, and then let it out very slowly?" Jim stiffened, and Blair hastily added, "It's not pattern breathing, Jim. It's nothing like that. It's not hard, it doesn't matter if you don't do it 'right.' It's no big deal."

"Then why are we doing it?"

"It's supposed to be relaxing. Which means if it makes you uncomfortable, we won't do it."

"No, I can... I can do it. Just, ah, count for me. Ok?"

Blair counted, pleased that Jim was willing to try, relieved that he'd gotten away with the lie. It was pattern breathing, just not one of the hard ones. The lie was justified, though. It wasn't pattern breathing that Jim had trouble with, it was *learning* pattern breathing. The first guide the police department had hired for him had been, well, evil was accurate, but not specifically descriptive. He'd been interested in Jim's performance, but not in his health or comfort. It had been almost three months since Blair had first read Jim's file, and he still could barely bring himself to think about it. As long as Jim ate, Brackett hadn't cared what he ate, or if it was nutritionally adequate or if he ate enough. When Jim didn’t eat, Brackett--at least when he noticed--badgered and belittled him. Jim showed up at the station and worked crime scenes, so it didn't matter that he couldn't sleep. If Jim was spiking so badly he couldn't do the work, then he might get a little support. If he was taken to the hospital with a reaction, Brackett usually showed up every once in a while to make sure he wasn't being poisoned. It was completely inconceivable, but in a way, the bigger surprise was that Jim had survived at all. The final straw--such transparent negligence that Jim's coworkers couldn't pretend that nothing was wrong--came when Brackett abandoned Jim at the police station while he was having a global systemic reaction. Seizures. Respiratory failure.

Brackett's attempts to 'teach' Jim pattern breathing had resulted in terror and hopelessness, not new skills.

But he's mine, now, Blair thought. Very soon he'd be able to back that up with formal documentation. Jim would be his responsibility. Blair could protect him.

Except--it turned out that six sentinels had been kidnapped. Poof, gone. Snatched out of their beds, out of airports. Jim was probably as strong as any of them. Jim hadn't taken the formal tests, but Blair knew what the average sentinel could do, and when Jim was on top of his game he was incredible. Fortunately nobody but Blair knew that. Jim couldn't be a target--he hadn't even been a sentinel long enough to have an annual performance rating at work.

Strange though, when he thought about it--how did whoever was behind this pick their victims? Four of them in law enforcement--but from different jurisdictions, different countries, even. Two from the National Parks Service. It wasn't like they all hung out together, had the same rumor mill. The employment records weren't centralized. Of course, sentinels identified as children were evaluated by their home states' DHS in order to prove compliance with federal laws that required adequate education for sentinel children until the age of eighteen. Most adults paid the hundred and twenty dollars the Princeton testing people charged for the eleven part comprehensive evaluation so that they had a quantified report to show potential employers.

But Jim hadn't taken those tests; he'd already had a job. Nobody knew how good Jim was, except maybe Simon Banks and a few other people at the PD. Maybe Jack could tell. And maybe--

God, too many people knew. But none of the others had been taken while their guide was present. Even if Blair couldn't keep Jim hidden, he could certainly keep him escorted. Besides, there were nine hundred other sentinels in the state of Washington. Ok, many of them were inappropriate, but Cassie Wells had been inappropriate.

"Not supposed to lie, you know," Jim muttered.

"Don't stop, three, four," Blair said.

"I've read the psych handbook."

"Oh. Right. Well. We're allowed to lie. The rule is, don't get caught in a lie that's not in the sentinel's best interest. Mostly, we don't bother, given, you know. Not being able to get away with it. I may hop on that bandwagon. How are you feeling?"

"Better. I'd like to try the soup."

While Blair was reheating the soup, Carolyn called. She wanted to know how Jim was doing. Blair looked over at the couch and raised his eyebrows. Jim shook his head, and Blair said that Jim was doing better, but sleeping. "In fact, they teach us to lie," Blair said after he'd hung up. "Aren't you glad I'm good at it?"

After they'd eaten, Blair stood outside the bathroom while Jim showered. Blair suggested bed, but Jim came back to the couch and turned on the TV. Blair settled on the loveseat with the study packet for the accreditation exam. He was doing practice tests continually. Now that he didn't have any coursework to do, he could give it even more time.

Which of the following is least likely to be the problem if the symptom is hives?

Orange juice

Grapes

Coffee

An apple

This was a bad question: it didn't say if the apple was organic or not. About ten percent of sentinels were allergic to orange juice, but apples were considered safe unless they were carriers of some kind of pesticide or preservative. On the other hand, contaminated apples didn't cause hives.

Blair checked orange juice and glanced over at the couch. Jim was asleep. Probably a good thing at this point.

Statistically, which is the least likely clothing material to provoke a reaction?

Silk

Cotton

Wool

All are equally likely to be irritating

Well, cotton, but the margin was very narrow. Individual sentinels varied a lot.

A sentinel with a VPR assessment of less than sixty percent would mostly likely:

Zone frequently on sound

Have trouble making sense of chaotic visual input

Have a poor memory of visual input

Have high odor detection, but poor odor recognition

VPR was visual pattern recognition, so--

"I don't know where they are," Jim whispered.

"What?" Blair asked, looking up.

"I'm sorry," Jim said, "I can't help you." He was crying.

Blair leaped for him, scattering books everywhere and landing with a thump on the floor beside the couch. "Jim! Wake up. Wake up."

But his eyes were open, streaming with tears. "I don't know."

"Jim!" Blair shook him.

Jim froze abruptly, going stiff and pale in Blair's arms. His lips formed, "Oh, crap," but there was no sound.

"Jim, you're ok. You're ok. Jim?"

Jim shuddered a little. "They're not real. They're not real."

"What aren’t? Jim?"

"Animals--God! The room was full of them. They were--sad. And so angry. They wanted--"

"What did they want?"

"I don't... I don't know. They wanted me to find...."

"What?"

"I don't know. Damn it. I'm seeing animals."

"Jim, it's a stress reaction. It's nothing. You were drugged today, one of your friends is missing. This is nothing...."

"Don't lie--"

"I'm not. Jim, if this was a problem, we'd be fixing it. Animals happen sometimes. They're not correlated with anything. It just makes a good story. Creepy and exotic."

"Hallucinations--"

"Hallucinations only count when you're awake. That crap today messed you up. Jim! It doesn't mean you're going crazy, and even if it did, today doesn’t count."

Jim didn't believe him. He didn't argue, but Blair could tell. He freed himself from Blair and got up from the couch to pace. "It's just a dream. Like any other dream."

"No! This wasn't like--anything. They were so...."

"Jim--"

"You're not listening!"

"Ok. Ok. This is me listening. Tell me about your animals."

But Jim just looked at him, shaking his head a little. Frustrated, confused, scared. Blair patted the seat beside him. Jim glowered in irritation and misery. "Come here," Blair said gently. Jim sat, swallowing his anxiety and resentment, only giving in because submitting to a helpful guide was better than the alternatives which haunted Jim's nightmares. Blair hated that. "I don’t think there's anything wrong with you. I really don't." Jim dropped his eyes. "Do you?"

"I...."

"Are you having trouble following conversations? Thinking clearly? Remembering things?"

Jim shook his head.

"Hear disembodied voices?"

Jim laughed reluctantly. "Yeah. But they're all real."

"Yeah. They are." Blair put a hand on his shoulder. "Jim, I don't think anything's wrong with you. You're a new sentinel, and that's hard, and you've had a hard time, I know. But you're settling out so nicely! Aw, Jim. I really think you're ok."

"It's nothing," Jim whispered.

"Let's go to bed," Blair said. "Come on. We'll do a body check."

Jim nodded, let Blair take him up to bed, listened while Blair talked him through his body one part at a time. Blair stayed long after Jim fell asleep, looking for... he didn't know what. Seeing animals? That was just nonsense. There was nothing wrong with Jim. Blair wasn't failing him. Jim was so much better than he'd been. He was going to be fine.

The next day at the police station there was news on the case--bad news. Three more missing sentinels. The first was a college student who'd been gone for two weeks, but had been fighting with her parents and was known to be moody, so no one missed her until a couple of days ago. The other two worked in the private sector: quality control in an ice cream factory and inspection in an aircraft factory. There was no obvious evidence of foul play, they had no enemies. No one had realized it might be connected to something bigger.

The same mixture of sedatives that knocked out Jim was found at four of the other scenes. Whether or not there were any other real clues, well, it was hard to be sure at this point. Nine people had been kidnapped. For each case, there were bags of 'evidence' which might, as far as Blair could tell, just be random carpet fluff. For most, there were interviews with family or friends or guide. For one, there was a video--airport security in St. Lewis showed the Canadian walking out with a woman in a trench coat. Looking at a copy of the picture, Jim said, "A disguise. That's a man." But they didn't know anything else. They left at the end of the day with no real pattern beyond the fact that all the victims had been extraordinarily gifted even for sentinels.

The FBI had taken charge, was 'coordinating' the investigations. Blair would have thought coordination would be a good thing, but it just seemed to annoy Jim's colleagues in Major Crimes

On the way home, Jim dropped Blair off on campus to pick up his car. Blair dashed inside Hargrove and up to the department. He snatched his mail on the way past and knocked on Jack's door. "Got a moment?"

"One," Jack said. "I'm grading undergraduate finals."

"Ouch. Sorry. I've got a quick question. Ah. Jim's seeing animals."

Jack looked up. "You're kidding. What kind?"

What kind? "Uh. A fox and a raccoon. I don’t know what else."

"Interesting." Jack stared into the middle distance, frowning.

"It's not anything, is it? It's just Jim's heard, well, things. He's pretty freaked out."

"What? No. No, it isn't anything." He was frowning. "Marcia's also seeing animals."

Jack didn't say anything else, just stared past Blair's left shoulder. "How is Marcia? Otherwise?"

Jack took a deep breath. "I... I meant to call you about that. I won't be available over the break. As soon as I get my grades in I'm flying to Colorado. Marcia's sick again."

Blair dropped into a chair. "How bad is it?"

"It's... it's pretty bad, Blair. She can't work any more. I'm going to try to talk her into coming back with me." He took off his glasses and rubbed his face.

"Her heart?"

"No, that's a little better. But she's been running a fever. For a while now."

"Damn, Jack. I'm sorry."

"Don't," he whispered. "Don't, Blair. Jim doesn't need you thinking about this. You can't afford to be hurting for someone else, or taking that home." He took a deep breath. "I'll be gone for about three weeks. If you need advice while I'm gone, call Isobella. She's seen pretty much everything."

"Ok."

"And don't worry about the animals. It happens sometimes, stress-linked, probably."

"Thanks. 'Night Jack.... Have a safe trip."

When Blair got home, Jim was on the phone and in a much better mood than when he'd seen him last. "It's the best idea we've had yet. It's just too bad the FBI thought of it. How soon can we get things rolling?"

Blair set his backpack in the spare room and perched on the couch to wait for Jim to finish. Jim was grinning when he put down the phone. "Chief, you know what you've been saying about somebody having access to sentinel scores? The FBI has been thinking along those lines too, and we've come up with something."

"Yeah? What?"

"We're inserting a new target into the database. Somebody irresistible."

"Why?" and then, "As bait?"

"The FBI is working up a fake set of scores for me. They'll insert the file tomorrow morning with the last batch from Tacoma."

"You? What do you mean you?" Blair asked, appalled.

"Well, it has to be somebody who checks out. They can't give somebody already in the files this sudden, fantastic score. But I'm prefect--I haven't taken the test yet."

"But, Jim! That could make you a target."

"Well, we're hoping. Chances are they already have their victims picked out. But it's the best idea we've had yet."

Blair choked. "You can't do this."

"If this is about lying about the scores, they'll be removed when this is over--"

Blair fled to the tiny, spotless bathroom. God. They were going to use his sentinel as bait. Jim was going to--

Jim was going to do his job. This was Jim's job.

Outside the bathroom door, Jim said, "Blair, if this is about me agreeing to this without your permission, I'm not used to having a guide. Not really. I'll try to do better."

Blair slung the door open. Jim stepped back. "Jim--these bastards kill people like you."

"And it's your job to keep me alive. You take your job pretty seriously. But Blair--I might be in a position to stop this. Look, Chief, I know what you've seen of me isn't all that inspiring. I mean, hey, you had to teach me to *sleep*. But my job... I'm very good at my job. Somebody out there is hurting innocent people, and this might be our chance to stop them."

"Yeah, I know." Blair swallowed. "You, ah, do this all the time."

"All the time."

***

The phone woke Blair, but not before Jim had time to get up and was answering it. It was dark in the loft, but Blair didn't have a clock in his room. Jim had been his alarm these last few months. Hearing steps on the stairs, Blair got up and poked his head out the door. "What's up?"

"They've got a body. We have to go."

Obediently, Blair grabbed his jeans. "A body? What--?"

"They think it's Aaron Mabry, the Customs agent."

"Hell."

"Come on. We'll have to hurry if we're going to snake the feds."

It was not a sentence Blair had ever expected to hear.

It was very cold, and Jim wouldn't run the heater in his truck because he said it stank. Blair huddled in his coat, trying not to think about another dead sentinel. Simon Banks was waiting when they pulled up at the overgrown vacant lot. "Come on, people let's go."

Jim hesitated as he got out of the car--police lights were flashing at two or three different rhythms and the street was crowded. Blair walked around and took Jim's arm. "You ok, man?"

"Yeah, I'm good." He stalked off after Simon. "Coroner here?"

"No, he's tied up. Double suicide on South Penn."

"Is he here? Hop to, folks. We don't have all night." A thin, fast moving man darted by clapping his hands.

Simon sighed. "Gentlemen, this is Ray Veccio, Fraser's guide."

Veccio made shooing motions. "Well. Come on. Work the scene. Which one of you is the local sentinel?"

Blair stepped between Jim and the man who was way too twitchy for a guide. "Ignore him."

Jim smiled. "Done. Stay close." Jim started out across the uneven ground of the vacant lot, Blair following just behind. "The place is full of footprints. I'm not going to be able to get anything."

"Teenaged girl sneaking back in from a date," Simon said from somewhere behind Blair. "Thank god I've got a boy."

Then there was the body. They were almost on top of it before Blair realized it wasn't just old debris. Jim circled slowly, combing the ground for clues. There were bits of trash here and there--a candy wrapper, a bottle top. Jim ignored them, but did take a little sample of mud smeared on a rock and bag it for Simon. When he started to bend down over the body, Blair caught his arm. "Stay back. I don’t want you touching it."

"Have you got an obvious cause of death?" Jim asked.

"No," Simon said. "Homicide got here first, they got a good look before they realized it was one of our missing people. They couldn't find any obvious problems, but then they know squat about sentinels. Blair? You want to take a look?"

"Oh! Yeah. Sure." The last time Jim had taken him to a murder scene, Blair had wound up disgracing himself behind a nearby bush while his poor sentinel held his hair.

"Here, Chief," Jim pressed a pair of gloves into Blair's hands.

"Oh. Thanks."

"You mind?" said Veccio, squatting down on the other side of the body.

Blair shrugged, wondering what he was supposed to do. Veccio, Simon and a few people standing to the side focused flashlights on the body. "No rash," Blair said, realizing that he'd been expecting this body to look like the last one. "But his face looks kind of puffy."

"That happens sometimes," Veccio said.

Blair checked for injection sites. If this had been an allergic reaction, they would have given cortisone. There was only one tiny dot that he could find. It was odd. How had he died? "Jim? Can you see anything?"

"He smells sick."

"What? Do you mean some kind of disease?" asked one of the men with a flashlight.

"No," Jim said slowly, "I don't smell a disease. All I smell is that funny sweet background smell, the one that doesn't change."

"Michelson's syndrome," Blair said.

"No way," said Veccio. "Michelson's takes years. His records don't include any history of that."

Blair swallowed an unkind comment about Canadian guide training. In a way it was a good thing Canada produced so few viable sentinels, since they didn't have a coherent system for either training or deploying them. Maybe there was cause and effect there--how could you have a system for dealing with what almost never happened? "Usually it takes years. But if you pile on enough stress it can go global in just a few days."

"Michelson's?" Simon asked.

"It's an autoimmune disorder," Blair said. "The body begins to randomly attack its own cells. Chronic Michelson's has a better outcome statistically than the sudden kind. It doesn't respond too well to drugs, you treat it with the more extreme breathing patterns. Circular breathing. Kundalini."

"I guess it didn't work," Simon said soberly.

"No, he probably didn't know them. We don't teach sentinels advanced breathing patterns unless they need them. Their bodies are too responsive to play around with that stuff." Blair sighed. "It would take a guide, somebody he trusted. If it were going to work at all."

"Frase knows them, though, right?" said one of them men circled around them.

Veccio's answer was very soft: "Yeah, Ray, Benny knows everything."

"Jim, can you give us a guess for time of death?" Carolyn's voice, remembering a question Blair should have thought of.

"Not more than four hours," Jim said. "I'm, ah, more used to smelling people who are. Alive."

The FBI arrived then, icily polite and well dressed and very annoyed. "Perhaps in your commendable zeal you've forgotten that kidnapping is a federal crime? And what is that dog doing here?"

"Wolf," Veccio corrected, but in the end everyone was chased off. They moseyed out of the vacant lot grumbling about jurisdiction and the time it would take to get the autopsy results. Only when they were back at the street did Carolyn turn on her heel and plant herself in front of them. "Simon, you know what that means. They're here somewhere."

"Who's where?" Blair asked, looking back over his shoulder at the FBI agents taking their turn to explore the sad relic that used to be a forty-year old divorced man with two children and a classy apartment overlooking the bay.

"The body's less than four hours old," Simon said. "He died in Cascade."

Blair turned to Jim to ask if this was true, but Jim had stepped away and was staring into the darkness. "Hey? You ok?" Blair whispered, putting a hand on Jim's arm.

Jim lifted the hand, patted it gently, and let it go, all the while never taking his eyes off of whatever he was seeing. Blair was elated; usually when Jim didn't want help he put up with it anyway, too insecure about his own abilities and too uncertain about what would happen if he insulted the guide to follow his own inclinations. For his part, Blair hated having to guess what Jim needed from him, but more than that, it was good to see Jim manage a polite 'no, thank you,' without being assaulted by anxiety about how Blair would take a refusal or worried that Blair wouldn't come back.

Raised voices brought Blair back to the argument going on behind him. "It doesn't make sense," Simon was saying. "They've got, what? Seven people? Are they hauling them from state to state in the back of a station wagon? There has to be a central location somewhere."

"No, wait, maybe," said Veccio. "Generally speaking, the abductions have been moving north, right? This is about as far north as you can go in the United States. And you've got this nice port--"

"Oh, crap!" someone yelled. "We're running out of country."

"Ray, for the last time, calm the hell down," Veccio muttered.

"Why would anybody take sentinels out of the country?" Simon asked. "Blair? Anybody? I thought you couldn't do anything with sentinels."

"You can't! You can't make them work." Blair lowered his voice, unable to say the 'worse' things loudly: "Even if it was for research--there's nothing you can learn from sentinels that are being held captive somewhere. The stress would change the results of *anything* people were trying to do. I mean, unless they--unless they're breeding them." Despite the dozens of people swarming around them, the silence enveloping the tiny group was so profound that Blair's whisper sounded like a bullhorn.

"Okay," Simon said. "They might be here. If they are here, we are damn well going to find them. Carolyn, come with me."

Blair glanced over at Jim. He was still intent, possibly listening to the feds discuss the case. Blair wrapped his arms in tight to ward off the cold and prepared to wait.

"Were you serious about that breeding thing? That's creepy and a half. Benny'll think that's funny, though. I keep telling him everybody wants him for his body."

"Shut up, Ray," said the other man.

"I thought you were Ray," Blair said to him.

"Ray Kowalski. That's Ray Veccio. He's the guide, I'm the liaison officer."

"His job is to feed the wolf."

"Actually, the wolf gets his own food. I got pulled into the picture because a couple years back Veccio slugged an INS guy in New Mexico."

"He deserved it," Veccio said.

"Actually, that's true."

"So you're Canadian then?" Blair said to the first one.

"Nope. Chicago born and bred."

"Then you got your guide training in America." Blair felt slightly disappointed--Canadian guides were notoriously bad (what few there were) and Blair had been curious.

"No guide training."

Uh. "Then how did you get accredited?"

"I'm not. I'm working for the Canadian government, and they don't test, just add you to the registry."

"Right, right," Blair said, trying not to look down his nose too obviously. "But who decides if you're competent?"

"Benny. Who else's opinion counts?"

Ray Kowalski chuckled. "You think that's bad? Before Ray here, ol' Frase was making do with the wolf."

Blair looked doubtfully at the animal on the other end of Kowalski's leash. Before he could figure out how to continue this strange conversation, Jim turned around and said, "Ready to go, Chief."

"What did they say?" Veccio asked.

"Who?" Jim asked, looking slightly surprised.

"The feds."

"Oh. I wasn't listening," Jim said absently. "Would have been a good idea though." He started toward the truck, leaving Blair to trail along behind.

"Jim?" Blair said after they'd gotten back to the main road. "What *were* you looking at?"

For a long time Jim didn’t say anything, and when he spoke it wasn't an answer. "Blair, what's Michelson's like?"

One of the reasons the American guide system worked so well was that there were some things a sentinel needed to look out for that he was better off not thinking too much about. Their bodies tended to be very responsive, not only to direct control, but to emotional states and expectations. Blair didn't want Jim dwelling on the details of Michelson's Syndrome. On the other hand, he didn't want Jim thinking Blair was trying to keep him ignorant either. "For Mabry, it probably felt like the flu--fever, some minor pain, maybe a little disorientation. There would have been some internal swelling. It can take just a few days."

"What about the other kind?"

"Depending on which tissues are most affected, it can look like other autoimmune disorders. Sometimes it responds to medication. Sometimes it changes. It's one of the things we had you checked for in October. You're fine."

"And you treat it with pattern breathing."

"Sometimes." Blair tried to think where this conversation was going.

"But you don't teach sentinels the patterns. Why?"

"It didn’t work out."

"It has to be a surprise to work?"

"No. Ok. When Burton first did his research with non-Western sentinels, in most of the societies he looked at, the sentinels were in altered states once a week or more. He brought that back with him."

"When he started telling people that all those 'crazy' people just had heightened senses."

"Yeah. Then. By the turn of the century, sentinels were all the rage and America and most of Europe had guide programs and everybody was studying the heck out of techniques to put everybody in altered states. There's this one picture from 1910 I saw in a textbook, a gymnasium full of sentinels in old fashioned work-out clothing lying on mats all doing circular breathing at the same time. But it was a bad idea. American culture just doesn't support all that ecstatic experience. At least if you're not drunk. There's no context for it. All the sentinels hated it, some of them had nervous breakdowns. It got taken out of the curriculum."

"But guides do learn it."

"Yeah. But it's different for us. Guide is a choice. And yeah, some of us hate it, but we only have to *do* it for about a semester. After that, we just have to remember."

"But if it's so awful--"

"Sometimes when a sentinel is in an intolerable situation--"

"Stress. Burn out."

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's a physical problem that the body can't deal with. Sometimes the body attacks itself. Or just pulls in and stops trying. Or weird, random stuff happens. And then...." Blair shrugged.

"So, the altered state thing is a last resort."

"Jim, I can't tell you why it works. When it works. Maybe it makes the conscious mind and the subconscious mind sit down face to face and work out who's running the body. Maybe it releases the pressure so the system isn't overwhelmed any more. I don't know."

"How bad is it? What you do for Michelson's? The pattern?"

"Well. Usually disorienting. Pretty emotional. Some people find them painful. Sometimes there are hallucinations--not bad. You know at the time it isn't real. You can stop, if you really need to. It isn't like a bad trip."

"I can see why this is unpopular."

"Jim. I'll teach you, if you want. I mean that."

"No. Thank you. I'm having enough trouble with reality."

They went back to the loft since Jim didn't have to be at work for about four hours. Blair sat down on the couch and fell immediately asleep. When he woke the sky was light and Jim was standing by the windows sipping coffee. "Sorry for checking out on you," Blair said, yawning.

Jim smiled slightly. "Yeah. What is it with you? You sleep almost every day."

But Jim hadn't slept. He was beginning to feel the pressure. "Want to stop for donuts on the way in?"

"We're taking separate cars today, Chief."

"Why? Oh, crap." No one had been taken while their guide was nearby.

"Blair," he said gently. "By this afternoon I'll have a tail. I'll be wired."

"That's. Good."

"I'd like you to sleep on campus for a couple of days."

Oh, god. "Yeah. Sure."

The day sped by, except for the twenty-three minutes Jim spent going to the deli down the street to pick up lunch. He went alone, except for his FBI tail. Blair spent the time in Simon's office, staring out the window and chewing on his fingernails. In the afternoon, Jim interviewed witnesses for another case. Blair went along, trying not to think about Jim's name in a file somewhere and the FBI two blocks behind.

Blair approached Simon about getting the feds to let him join them that night on watch, but Simon only grumbled that his own people weren't even allowed join the stakeout and Blair should leave police work to the professionals anyway.

After work, they went to the loft in separate cars and ate dinner. Blair tried to be a good sport--confident, relaxed, supportive. When it was time to go, he didn't hesitate by the door or say anything unusual. He probably smelled like an anxiety attack in progress, but that was ok. Jim would know he could handle it.

The balding Ray was waiting in the dorm lobby when Blair arrived. He motioned Blair to follow and headed for the courtyard. He kept going through the cafeteria on the other side and out the side door to the employee parking lot. "What's going on?" Blair asked, more puzzled than worried.

Ray waved at a Toyota which Blair saw held the other Ray and the wolf. "We thought we'd stake out your partner's apartment and thought you might like to join us."

Blair thought briefly of what Simon Banks had said about leaving it to the professionals. "Sounds good to me." He climbed into the back seat with the wolf.

They parked several blocks up the street from the loft. They could see the van the feds were using. Blair had been on a couple of stakeouts already. This felt completely different, even when one of the Rays offered him a Styrofoam cup of coffee as they hunkered down to wait.

Blair's cell phone rang. Jumping, he fumbled it open. "Sandburg."

"Chief, is that you?"

The hair standing up in the back of his neck, Blair said carefully, "I just said so...." But Jim didn't mean was it him on the phone.

"Damn it, Sandburg--"

"I'm staying out of the way. I'm just close. You know."

Jim sighed.

"So--what? Did you hear me?"

"Not exactly. Kind of."

"That's incredible. I'm several hundred feet away."

"That's great. I can't tell you how proud I am. You shouldn't be out there by yourself--"

"I'm not. I've got the Canadian's entourage. They brought coffee."

"Fine. Stay out of the way. Watch your ass. And if they tell you to do something, do it. They both used to be cops."

Meekly, Blair agreed and hung up.

Both of the Rays looked at him sympathetically and Veccio said, "He's good."

"Oh, yeah. Give me six more months and he'll be unbelievable."

They sat in silence for a while. Cars went by, not many. It started to drizzle. "Uh, Ray, what do you know about seeing animals?"

Ray turned in his seat to look back at him. "Sentinels, you mean? It's a pain in the ass."

Kowalski snorted. "It's not seeing them that's the problem, it's talking to them."

"Nah. Talking to ghosts is way worse."

Trying not to sound shocked or disbelieving, Blair said, "Constable Fraser talks to ghosts?"

"Oh, yeah. Before I figured out he was a sentinel, I spent half a year thinking he was just kind of spacey and talked to himself a lot. He's neither. Although I'm not making any promises about his sanity."

"Oh. Is that usual? For Canadian sentinels?"

"Not from what I've seen. But I don't meet many Canadian sentinels. Not usual for Americans?"

"Uh, no. Not really."

"I meet American guides sometimes, but we don't talk much. They've got this whole attitude thing going. You know. All that education."

Blair felt awkward, as well as confused and a little appalled. "I haven't graduated yet. I'm not even official."

Veccio chuckled. "That's ok. You can be obnoxious later."

Blair didn't know what to say to that, so he let the silence go. After a while, Kowalski said, "How do you think they're transporting them? Plane?"

"I dunno," the other Ray said. "That's pretty exposed. Minivan caravan? Could they keep them drugged all the time? Fraser's pretty touchy with drugs."

"A lot more would be dead. From what I've seen of his file, your Fraser is unusually durable."

"Boat?" asked Ray Kowalski. "Really big truck?"

"This is costing somebody big bucks," Blair said. It wasn't a new thought. Blair and Jim had spent the morning with Simon and Henry trying to figure out who was behind the abductions. Some ambitious dictator? Or an arms dealer who was hoping there would be a market for sentinel children a decade or two down the line?

Apparently the entourage had been having the same conversations. "I'm telling you it's the Russians," Veccio said. "The communist countries decimated their sentinel populations in the fifties and sixties. They had all these scientifically efficient programs - sentinels dropped like mayflies."

"Everybody's short of sentinels," Blair said. "Burton estimated that in aboriginal populations the frequency was about 1 in 220. Right now, the highest frequency is about one in a thousand, and that's for Japan, the Philippines, and Sweden." In America it ran 1 in 5 or 6 thousand, and there were places that had even fewer. Not all of them were as nice as Canada.

"Wow. Is it something in the water?" Kowalski asked.

"No, it's in the genes, how our ancestors dealt with sentinels. In the West, first we thought they were possessed or making pacts with devils. Then we thought they were crazy. Colonialism spread our misconceptions everywhere, even to places that had strong, functional sentinel traditions. There were places in Central America where the local churches were advocating stoning sentinels into the 1920's."

"Anybody ever tell you you're a barrel of laughs to have around?" Veccio asked.

"It's not India. Plenty of sentinels, fantastic training. They barely need guides. If emigrating were easier, they'd put us all out of business." But almost nobody would let their sentinels emigrate. Some countries didn't even let them take foreign vacations. "It's not Japan--they have more sentinels per capita than India, and they think theirs are better than everybody else's. Russia--their numbers are coming back up slowly. They have all they can handle." But the world was such a big place. For every country that was civilized and competent in their treatment of sentinels there was a cheapo dictator who could never get enough for the secret police.

They took turns sleeping. The rented Toyota was cramped and even with the wolf across his lap, cold. Still, Blair got more rest than he would have in the dorm.

Nothing happened that night.

The next day the FBI sent Jim on a series of errands. Without Blair. There were no new leads. At least no new bodies turned up.

That night Jim turned to Blair as they came in and asked, "Will you teach me circular breathing?"

Blair frowned. Circular breathing wasn't something you did casually, even if you *liked* pattern breathing. "Yeah, if you want."

"Tonight. After dinner," Jim said firmly.

"Ah, if you want to do it, you don't want to do it on a full stomach."

"Ok. Now?"

"Jim, are you--yeah. Ok. If you're sure. Um. You might want to shower first. Relax a little, stop smelling the day? I'll get ready out here."

Well. This was a bad idea. There was no way in hell Jim was ready for this, and no reason Blair could think of why he would want to do it. None of this stopped him from laying out a clean sheet on the rug, turning on a white noise generator, and turning down the lights. Brackett had kept Jim ignorant of basic strategies and warnings. That Jim was asking questions frequently and openly--that was good. But Jim still felt very vulnerable. Maybe this was just an attempt to work out the boundaries, to test how far Blair would go. Which still left this a bad idea.

Jim came out in his bathrobe, and Blair patted the nest he'd made. He slid a pillow under Jim's head and snagged another to sit on. "You sure?"

Jim nodded. He didn't look sure. He looked scared out of his mind.

"You know, there are easier patterns. We don't have to--"

"I'm sure."

Why? Blair thought. But he described the pattern, and then held Jim's hands to his own chest and stomach. "Feel that. Your muscles have to move just like that."

"That fast?"

"Yes, that fast. It doesn't change. You, um, might feel some strange physical sensations, that's normal, when you do it right."

"What happens if I do it wrong?"

"You hyperventilate and pass out. Don't worry. I'll be watching for that. Just remember, you can stop any time."

"Ok. Let's do it."

Jim reached for Blair's hand, but Blair pulled away. "I'm sorry. For this to work, I can't touch you. But I'll be right here."

Jim closed his eyes. "Ok."

Blair kept one eye on Jim and the other on his watch. Three minutes slipped by. "Don't slow down, Jim. Keep your speed. You're ok." It was hard not to touch him. But even if that wouldn't interfere, his senses might spike a little. Blair's touch would be painful. "Doing great, Jim. You should be feeling a little funny now. That's ok. Just keep your speed."

Jim's hands opened and closed, but he kept breathing. The first spasms, when they came, were fairly mild, but nearly three minutes early. Blair kept prodding Jim to keep his speed even, but more quietly. When Jim released a low moan, Blair leaned forward and whispered, "Not yet. Not yet. Stay with it. Not yet." But he wasn't sure. He'd taught this to undergraduate psych majors, not to sentinels. The semester he'd learned to do it himself, well, mostly it had been fun. Except for the times it made him cry and that one time he'd hallucinated he was a rock. That kind of hurt. But surely his experience couldn't have any useful bearing on Jim's. "You're doing great," he whispered desperately. "Just hang in there a little longer." This was a mistake. Jim couldn't have known what he was getting into. Blair should not have gone along with this.

It was too late. Jim's eyes opened, focused on nothing. He lost the pattern, gasping with long pauses in between. His back arched, his hands curved into claws. "Jim? Easy. Just let it go. You're done. Just let it go." Blair chewed his lower lip while Jim writhed weakly on the floor.

Another long minute went by as Jim stilled. Blair swallowed hard and made himself sit quietly. What Jim needed now was time. Jim rolled onto his side and began to cry. Blair crawled closer. "Jim? Oh, god." He laid the sheet over Jim's shoulders. "Jim? It's ok. It's almost over."

"They won't talk to me!"

Blair went cold. "Who won't talk to you?"

"I can't," Jim sobbed, "get them to tell me where they are."

"Animals? You're seeing animals."

"All the time, but I can't.... Blair! I can't!"

"Jim, it's not terrible, seeing animals. It's ok. It happens sometimes." Jim shuddered. Blair laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "The Canadian sees animals, Jim. For years, apparently. And he does just fine. Jim--it's ok--"

Jim laughed, sounding semi-hysterical and completely heartbroken. "The Canadian is one of the animals. A big caribou or something. He's trying to look after the others, but Adrian's having panic attacks, I think. God, Blair. I don't know where they are...."

Blair eased closer, and when Jim didn't shrink away Blair cuddled him in his arms. This probably wasn't as bad as it looked. Although Jim falling apart over an ongoing delirium *looked* pretty bad. But almost everybody was a little messed up after this pattern. "I'm so sorry, Jim. I shouldn't have let you do this."

"I didn't know what else to do." Jim began to come down, the tense muscles going slack, his breathing slowing. Blair checked the carotid pulse. Not bad.

When the storm seemed to be over Blair got up and fetched a glass of juice and some crackers. Jim sat up and took them, refusing to meet Blair's gaze. "Um. You know, that was pretty much a standard experience. You did fine." No answer. "Jim?"

"I’m ok, Sandburg. I'm, you know, sorry."

"That's ok. It's fine." Blair tried not to worry. He told himself that if it was, for example, his mom who decided to solve her problems by seeking visions he would have thought nothing of it. Hell, she did that two or three times a year anyway. It was just because this was Jim. But Jim had had a rough year. A lot of his old techniques didn't work any more. He was just expanding his options. It showed great adaptability, really.

Blair fried up some lean pork chops for dinner. Jim ate obligingly, and when it was time for Blair to leave, he promised that he was fine and that he would get some rest. "You call me if you need me," Blair said.

"I'll call."

Blair spent another night in Kowalski's rental car. He was prepared this time--he brought a blanket and some granola bars. It was another quiet night. Blair was almost sorry; if this was going to happen, couldn't they get it over with?

Jim looked worn when he got to the station the next morning. Blair snagged him before Simon and took him to the breakroom. He shut the door. "Jim, can you give me a body check."

"I'm good," Jim said unconvincingly.

"Yeah. Obviously. Jim. We don't just do body checks because we need information." He nudged Jim to sit at the table and then laid a hand on the back of his neck. "Come on. Just a little one."

"We don't have time."

Blair leaned around to meet Jim's eyes. "Ok. I try really hard to give you as much control as possible. But when it's important, I have to be the guide. Give me this, or I will tell Simon you're not fit for duty."

Jim's eyes widened. "You can't--"

"I can't *make* him bench you, no. Do you really think he'll let my lack of credentials get in the way?"

"You don't understand--"

"This is what I understand. You are my job. I take that every bit as seriously as you do you job. Do you understand?"

"Blair, I can't live this way."

"Really?" Blair said, thinking they had pretty much established Jim couldn't live the other way. But Jim didn't look trapped and resentful. He looked ashamed. "Don't bullshit me, Ellison. This is not about you having control issues. This is about you feeling guilty about being out here while a bunch of sentinels are prisoner somewhere."

"No! This is about me not *finding* them."

"So you don't care if you're hurting. You deserve it. After all, you're failing."

"Don't!" Jim snapped, but when Blair didn't flinch he sagged in the chair. "Believe it or not, I don't usually get so personal."

"Jim, it's hard not to be personal. *I* feel really bad about what's happening, and I'm supposed to try to keep some distance from your work so that both of us aren't freaking at the same time. But, Jim, you will do a better job if you're not strung so tightly. So just give me a damn body check! Ok?"

Jim had gotten pretty good at it, once Blair showed him what to do. The body check quickly put him into a light, functional zone. Blair kept a hand at the back of Jim's neck and talked him through relaxing. Blair tried not to worry.

They spent the day at the big shipping port. The FBI had gotten search warrants for the most likely possibilities, but Jim and Blair walked up and down the docks, smelling, listening for some trace of *something* that warned of trapped sentinels. They came up with a big fat zero; maybe the kidnappers had already sailed off. Or left by car. Or maybe they were still in town, looking to replace the two who had died.

After work, Jim and Blair went grocery shopping. "I can still smell dead fish," Jim said.

"Ew. I hope it's the dead fish from the dock, not the dead fish here!"

"Thank you for that image. Really. Thanks a lot." But Jim was smiling slightly. "So what are you doing for Christmas?"

"You're kidding! What's the date?"

"The nineteenth."

"Wow." Grades would be posted. Blair really should call and find out just what skipping out on that test did to his final grade. Not that it really mattered, at this point. "Um. About Christmas. You noticed I’m Jewish, right?"

"Ah, right." Jim colored. Apparently he'd forgotten. Gosh, what could possibly distract him? "It's still traditional for students to go home for the break."

"Nah. Mom comes into town at the end of January. She teaches at resorts in California during the holidays."

"Oh. That'll be nice."

"Hey, you pick out some steak or something. I'm going to look at cheese." Cheese was the latest phase in Blair's ongoing campaign to get Jim enthusiastic about food. Cheese could be very mild and complicated, but it wasn't just the meek cheeses that were sentinel favorites. Some of the stronger ones were overwhelming in a good way.

Something growled across the aisle, and Blair looked up, expecting to see some kid playing a game. There was no kid. There was no Jim, either. Dropping the cheese, Blair stepped forward looking around. He spotted Jim almost at once, at the front of the store and heading for the door. Horrified, Blair sprinted after him. After only a couple of steps, though, Blair tripped over something high against his shin and tumbled forward on his face. Blair bounced to his feet. He couldn't see Jim. He didn't know what the FBI tail looked like. But someone was hurrying away from Blair, headed toward produce.

That thing he'd tripped over. It was a shoe. Blair leaped, coming down on his assailant in an awkward tackle that made Blair wonder what people saw in football. As they hit the ground, a gun skittered away. For some reason, this made Blair even angrier. He grabbed the guy by the hair and shoved his head into the floor.

The store security guard came over and then one of the FBI agents. "Where's Jim?" Blair demanded.

"We lost him."

They brought Blair's prisoner in on assault and carrying a concealed weapon. He refused to say anything at all, even give his name. While Blair waited in Simon's office, the police ran his prints, tried to talk to him. Simon wanted to kick him and give him a tail. The FBI thought he'd see through it and wanted to try to cut a deal.

Blair slipped down to holding and took a look. The man was calm--he barely looked interested. This wasn't going to go anywhere. The whole thing was hopeless.

Blair went home. Well, he went to the loft. With Jim missing, it didn't feel like home. Blair stormed from room to room, not looking for anything, not putting anything away, just--unable to sit still. Wanting to destroy something. God. Jim. He'd been right there, not fifteen feet away and Jim had been taken out from under him. Blair shoved the coffee table out of the way and threw himself onto the floor, not even bothering to take off his shoes. He let the breaths rip into him, one after another. His rhythm was mechanical, almost harsh. He had no watch, but just about the time he began to feel bored the tingles started in his fingers and lips. He gripped his resolve and kept breathing. This was when he always had to remind the students to keep the rhythm up. It was easy, when you were feeling a little floaty and detached, to let your mind wander or just enjoy the weird relaxed moment.

But the moment wasn't tempting, not when he thought of Jim. The FBI had lost him. Jim had no hope. Blair had no options except this hopeless one.

Tears prickled at his eyes. At the back of his mind, Blair observed that this was generally too early for tears. Faster. Keep it even. Don't stop. Don't stop.

The world tilted under him. His body hardly seemed to exist. Everything burned.

Keep it even. Don't stop.

When his ears changed shape, it *hurt*. Blair let himself scream, didn't let himself stop breathing. His feet turned into paws. Reluctantly. It hurt, hurt. Turning into animals happened sometimes and wasn't, *damn it*, what he was looking for. He wanted to stop, to just try to cope and figure out what the hell animal he was, but he wasn't here for that. This wasn't a game. This wasn't an exercise. He was looking for Jim and there was no place else to look.

He kept breathing. The breaths burned dryly. The body burst around him like a dropped water balloon. Blair screamed, between breaths.

Something heavy pushed on his face, something with cool, blunt points, and Blair opened his eyes. The cat beside him was huge, and somehow Blair was surprised. He hadn't thought this would work. Not really. "Jim--" he choked.

Jim's blue eyes peered at him out of the cat's shiny black face. Blair sobbed. "Jim, tell me where you are!" But hadn't Jim said all along that the animals wouldn't talk to him, couldn't say where they were? Blair reached for the cat, and his arms connected with nothing.

He was in a small enclosed area, tall enough to stand up in, wide enough to lie down. There was a mat at the back and a bowl of cold oatmeal. The walls were transparent but slightly distorting, and trying to focus out hurt a little. The outer space was long and narrow, filled with many more enclosures. Each enclosure had an occupant, not all of them were asleep. It was late, but the room was bright. To the right, lying on a thin pad, was a young woman, quietly crying. It was a face Blair knew from the files, the missing college student.

He could smell the tears--each cubicle had a small vent. The air was too warm and reeked of tears and sweat and fear and hopelessness. They weren't taken out to wash every day, and the stench of misery built up and up. If he let himself think about it the smell threatened to choke him. The air was hot and thick, and every breath was full of death....

Oh, god, Jim. Don't think about it. Let it go.

Far down to the left he could hear an unfamiliar voice murmuring, "You're not sweating, Adrian. You need to drink. It's the right kind of water."

"I can't. They might have drugged it. Poisoned it. Anything."

"They didn't poison the water. They want us alive."

"They want you alive, Ben. They've figured out I'm useless by now."

"Adrian. Listen to me. It's the right water. It's not opened. You're having a hard time with the stress, but you're not paranoid."

"Call it a new phobia. I can't drink their water."

"Can you drink mine?" the calm voice asked. Then, a little louder, "Pardon me. If you wouldn't mind, we would like to trade water."

Footsteps. Someone was coming. Blair tried to squint against the bright light, the distorting glass, but he couldn't see the face. Around him, the cubicle fell away into a haze. No, Blair thought. Not yet. Where are you? Who are these people?

But it was gone. Blair was lying on the floor at the loft, his throat dry and aching, tears on his face. He still didn't know--

God. Jim.

He had to go back. That was all. He had to go back. But his head was pulsing with something that didn’t hurt but wouldn’t let him let go and he couldn’t control his breathing, which was mostly sobs. Oh, god. All that and he still didn’t know where Jim was.

Jim didn’t have the training the others had, even poor Adrian who was so messed up after his first guide died. Jim had police training, and yes, that would keep him from freaking, help him to think. But he wasn’t coping well with the smell of the terror and pain of the others.

Blair sat up and rubbed his face. He had to do something. He couldn’t just do nothing while Jim--

No, don’t think about it. Just do something. Blair lurched to his feet and staggered to the fridge. Ideally, you should eat after one of the more extreme breathing patterns, drink lots of water, rest. He downed several swallows of orange juice out of the carton, wiped his mouth on his hand, and retrieved his backpack.

When he opened the door, both Rays were standing in the hall. Veccio blinked. "Get your hearing upgraded?"

"Are you ok?" Kowalski asked at the same time.

Blair dropped his backpack and pounced on Veccio, pinning him against the opposite wall. "They’re real, aren’t they! The goddamn animals are real!"

"Well, that kind of depends on your definition of real."

"Frobrisher sees them," Ray Kowalski said.

"Constable Frobrisher is certifiable."

"The animals are real." Blair hardly knew what he was angry at, except that way too casual Canadian policy made it possible for two guys who had probably never had a class in sense perception or brain chemistry to be in charge of a sentinel. A trained guide would have known that the animals being real *meant* something, that it was important, that it was goddamn *earth shaking*!

Blair sagged. A trained guide would have just been wandering around hoping that his sentinel was having not-too-dangerous delusions. A trained guide wouldn’t have a fucking clue.

If sentinels at the turn of the century had been seeing each other as animals and talking to people who weren’t there, no wonder the establishment had thought they were responding badly to altered states. Hell, given the worldview at the time, the *sentinels* probably thought they were responding badly.

"I’ve seen them," Blair whispered miserably. "I know where they are."

"What--?"

"Where--?"

"I don’t know. I mean I saw them, but I don’t know how to get to them." About five minutes into his story, Blair realized that he must still be half out of his mind. It couldn’t have been real. Things like that didn’t happen to him. Mom, yeah. People in India, maybe. Jim. They happened to Jim, apparently. Now anyway. But Blair wasn’t a sentinel or a mystic. The breathing exercises were for personal development, stress relief; visions didn’t happen to him. But he remembered the choking smell of despair and fear.

"A long, narrow room. Like the back of a big truck?" Veccio asked.

"Yeah. Maybe."

"We might be able to use this," Kowalski said.

***

It took about an hour to set up. Kowalski was an employee of the federal government, and he managed to get an interview with the prisoner. Blair watched from the observation room. Anyone with even basic information about Jim would know he was a probationary guide and in no way a cop. His presence would subtract credibility.

Kowalski brought the prisoner in and sat casually to one side of the table. Veccio made an entrance, strutting in and looking smug. "My, my, *my*," he said, smiling wolfishly. "Mr. ...King isn’t it?" He pretended to look at his folder.

"I ain’t answering no questions."

The smile got bigger. "I’m not asking you any questions. Did you hear me ask you any questions? I’m just here to straighten out the paperwork. Now, let’s see. Conspiracy. Two counts second degree murder. Ten counts assault. Ten counts kidnapping--"

"You don’t got nothing!"

"Let’s talk about your little portable zoo. Let’s talk about at least one of your accomplices. I expect there will be prints, and if not, well, as a rule sentinels make excellent witnesses--Ray, can you schedule a line up? We know about everything, Mr. King. If you wanted to answer any questions, you’d have to get in line."

From the observation room, Blair could see the suspect pale.

"You kept them isolated. No human contact. Some of them for weeks. Sentinels are very sensitive about that sort of thing. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing a judge that prolonged physical isolation counts as assault, possibly torture."

Kowalski, who hadn’t spoken at all, grinned like this was very funny. "I’m thinking eight counts of attempted murder."

"And the oatmeal. Not nutritionally complete. What do they charge starving your prisoners under in this state?"

"Federal crime," Kowalski corrected.

"I want to make a deal!"

"Did you hear me offer you a deal?"

Got him. A shudder ran through Blair and his eyes filled.

"Blair? Are you--What’s wrong?" Sharona asked from the door. It couldn’t even be seven in the morning, but like Blair she may well have been up all night. Blair pulled her into the room and motioned her to be quiet. This was it.

"I can’t make you any promises. Wouldn’t if I could," Ray Veccio was saying.

"I’m just a little fish here. I’m nobody. I can give you the big guys! I’ll tell you everything. From the beginning."

Veccio reluctantly pulled a tape recorder from his pocket, looked at it for a moment, and reluctantly put it on the table. "Go ahead. From the beginning."

So he started from the beginning; how he’d been hired, what he knew about the ringleaders, where they’d bought the guns, their contact in the records department of the sentinel testing facility who sold them the names of most of their victims. He told where they had rented the truck, how they had gotten their medical supplies, how they had picked up each of the victims. He didn’t know every detail, but he knew quite a lot.

Through it all Veccio looked patient and not terribly impressed. He gave no indication that it was the end of the story he was fishing for: where the truck was now. Blair was leaning against the window frame, his hands leaving sweaty streaks on the cream paint. Hurry, hurry, just get to it already. But there could be no hurrying this.

Simon came in, then Henry and Carolyn. They watched the scene play out in silence as King gave names and dates. Minutes crawled by.

The FBI sentinel assigned to the case came in with his guide. They were both perfectly dressed and perfectly polite and so professional with each other that it gave Blair the creeps. The guide stepped up to the mirror and inclined her head. "Looks like you were right."

"What did I tell you? Don’t mess with a pissed off guide." His eyes scanned the small crowd and settled on Blair. "How’d you get him?"

"We made a guess about the condition of the captives and bluffed."

The sentinel’s eyes--quick, intelligent, knowledgeable--flickered a smile. Blair just wasn’t good enough to be lying to sentinels. "No, really. How’d you get him?"

"It doesn’t really matter," said his guide impatiently. "His lawyer’s not here. He’s already declined to speak. Everything will be thrown out. We’ll never get a conviction."

"Not his," Blair said, "But we’ll get everybody else and the sentinels back." Then, because he was nervous and the FBI was irritating, "I asked the animals."

The sentinel smiled at Blair. "You’ve seen animals."

"Don’t. Start," his guide muttered, folding her arms.

"Yes. Have you?" Blair asked. He wanted to piss the woman off. He wanted to make the world shake. He wanted to go into the next room and strangle the man who had helped capture Jim.

"No. I always wanted to. I collect sightings."

"They’re a hobby of his. I’m only going to say this one more time. They’re a myth. There are no animals. It’s just a story sentinel children tell each other at camp."

"Yup," the sentinel said, looking at Blair but clearly speaking to her. "If your guide doesn’t take care of you, the animals come and make you crazy."

Blair hadn’t heard that. He’d never even wondered what little sentinels whispered to each other after dark. He should have....

In the other room King was explaining how they’d taken the Canadian. The airport they’d been passing through hadn’t been designed for efficient security-most of the food vendors were outside the area screened by the metal detectors. When Veccio, Kowalski and the wolf had gone off for food and left Fraser with the baggage, a voice (from well out of reach) had whispered that an accomplice had a gun trained on Fraser’s unarmed friends, and if he didn’t quietly and quickly head for the door, all of them would be killed.

That would be how they got Jim. Someone had told him that King was standing next to Blair with a gun. Jim would have gone. He knew by then that these people didn’t care if somebody died. He would have just walked out. Blair felt sick.

The sentinel from the FBI leaned over and whispered, "The thing is, guides don’t see animals."

"They don’t try hard enough," Blair whispered miserably.

It took another forty-five minutes to get the last location of the truck that was transporting the sentinels. The captors had rented a large house outside of town. The plan had been to wait there another two days and then take them out in a private plane, first to Alaska and then to a final destination King didn’t know.

As soon as they had an address on the house, Blair was out the door. Simon was right behind him. He caught Blair by the arm and handed him to Henry. "Brown, keep a leash on the guides. I do *not* want them in the way."

So when they got to the house, Blair, Sharona, and Veccio were in the back seat of Henry’s car at the end of the caravan. It was too late anyway, of course. The truck was gone. The tire tracks of the eighteen wheeler left dark scars in the grass behind the house and there were dirty dishes in the sink, but the sentinels and their captors were long gone. Probably they had left right after King had been arrested.

Never mind, Blair thought. It doesn’t matter. We know where they rented the truck. We have the license number.

We will find him. He will be fine.

Blair sat on the hood of Henry’s car watching the FBI sentinel walk the crime scene for nearly an hour before disappearing into the house. Finally, Blair let himself be taken back to the PD. He sat on the sofa in Simon’s office, too tired to put two words together into a thought. His hair was dirty-practically sticky when he ran his fingers through it. Blair hadn’t showered since the evening of the day before yesterday. Jim would be revolted when he smelled-

Blair closed his eyes, not trying to think any more. He fell asleep there. He had fuzzy hopes of dreaming of Jim. Or of animals. But there was nothing but sleep.

***

In the cage just forward of Jim was the girl--young enough to be one of Blair’s students, damn it. She had no business here--had a rash on her arm. It was sandpapery and pale red, except for the bright streaks where she’d scratched it. It ought to be nothing; Blair would shrug over the rash saying ‘contact dermatitis.’ He’d wash it and slather it in aloe or antihistamine cream and it would go away by the next day.

There were no guides here.

Looking at sentinels from a distance over the years, Jim had always assumed that they were pampered prima donnas, fussed over and given their every whim because what they did made them so valuable. Looking around now, Jim could see everything he’d missed.

Adrian Monk was to Jim’s left, in the first cage by the doors. He was sleeping now, not deeply. Despite Fraser’s patient coaxing, Monk had eaten almost nothing in days and only taken a little water. He wasn’t doing well. Regardless of appearances, neither was Fraser. He was friendly and unfailingly polite, but under all that was a racing heart and such a stink of stress hormones that Jim couldn’t figure why the man wasn’t screaming out loud.

Beside Fraser were the two Search and Rescue women. They were awake, huddled together against the plexiglas wall that divided their cells. Whispering, telling each other stories, comparing childhoods, Jim thought, although he wasn’t really listening. They smelled like anger and unshed tears.

On Jim’s other side was Cindy, scratching occasionally in her sleep. Beside her, along the center of the front wall, was Diego, zoned on an ant that was crawling up the central aisle. In the first of the longer, narrower boxes that lined the other side was Mark. He did quality control for ice cream. He was engaged. He liked to bowl. To Jim, he smelled like despair.

All of them smelled like despair. Why not, in this rathole with dim prospects? All but Cindy had been separated from their guides, besides. He understood now, what a difference a guide could make even when things were really bad. He wished Blair-

He wasn’t going to think about Blair. He wasn’t. It wouldn’t help.

If he listened, he could hear outside the truck. It was nearly morning out there. Birds were screaming. It wasn’t a dawn chorus so much as a dawn riot. The truck was still now, but they’d driven most of the night. Not highways, so they couldn’t be too far from Cascade, but Jim didn’t know exactly where. They weren’t near the ocean, but Jim couldn’t tell much else. Maybe if Blair-

He’d dreamed of Blair. How pathetic was that? He’d dreamed Blair had come to him, looked around the little glass zoo full of sentinels, and whispered to Jim that everything was going to be fine, that he shouldn’t pay any attention to the smell, the fear around him. He’d dreamed….

He wasn’t going to think of Blair. There wasn’t any point.

To the left, the younger of the S&R sentinels was whispering voicelessly, "No, I was a city girl all the way. Los Angeles. God, I would have given anything to get out, you know, those places you see on television? Mountains. Rivers. I didn’t see any of that until sentinel camp, when I was twelve."

"God. I was so scared my first camp!" a soft southern accent answered.

"Why? Was it awful?"

"I didn’t know any other sentinels. You were from LA, but I was from nowhere. In my whole county there was just me and some girl about four years behind me. We had a facilitator come through for an afternoon every two weeks and that was it."

Jim nodded to himself. Most school systems had only one or two sentinels at most, not enough to hire someone full time. St. Agnes’ had brought in a monk who went from private school to private school all over the state supervising the testing all children took and teaching the sentinels he found. Jim remembered him; tall, kind of old, gray hair. Not a bad guy. He’d kept his temper, even during that horrible fight with Jim’s father.

The thin mattress seemed to tilt under him, and Jim closed his eyes on the vertigo. *He’s not a sentinel. No son of mine is a freak.*

But no. That couldn’t be right. That couldn’t have been a real memory. He hadn’t been a sentinel until last February. That was fact. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could make go away or forget.

Except Blair’s supervisor had told Blair that Jim had been a sentinel in Peru. Jim had pretty much forgotten that, hadn’t he? Jim’s stomach knotted, and he pressed one hand to his mouth, hoping he wasn’t about to vomit the half-bowl of oatmeal that had been dinner.

"Naw. It wasn’t so bad. Turned out everybody was as scared as me, and we could all smell it on each other."

On his right, Cindy stirred, scratching her arm even as she joined the quiet conversation. "When I was a kid, it was cool, you know? Being a sentinel. Special." She laughed sadly. "I used to feel sorry for people who were ‘normal.’ I… I’d give anything to be normal now."

No one answered for a moment, and then from the other side came Fraser’s murmur. "My grandmother was a sentinel. And my half sister… And my father’s partner."

"Your father was a guide," Jim said, more thinking out loud than answering. He tried to picture his own father as a guide. Something about the thought made him flinch away.

"Yes," Fraser said. "No. Well, yes. But not a very good one." There was a short pause, and Jim, cold, pulled his legs in and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. His stomach still felt uncertain. Distantly, in the grayness, Fraser added more quietly, "No, you weren’t. You were a terrible guide. Constable Frobrisher is certifiable." Jim remembered what Blair had said about Fraser hallucinating for years. God, they were all so screwed. Jim had been the last hope.

There wasn’t any hope now. The big man Jim only knew as Doug had pinned Jim in a headlock while his partner had patted him down and removed his wire. Jim had been so sure of the plan. He had been sure that when they made their grab, the FBI would be able to move in. He had expected to have some warning, to go down fighting. He had never imagined quietly walking out without a peep. "Do you see that man by the yogurt? He has a gun pointed at your guide."

Damn, damn. Sandburg probably felt just awful about this mess. Worse if he knew he had been used as leverage. He took this whole thing so seriously. Ernest. Hopeful. Jim had seen it before, in the army, back when he’d spent a month at an orientation class at the police academy. Kids who believed in what they were doing, dedicating their lives to some ideal. Jim had been looking to use that earnestness. Professor Kelso had explained that the young man Jim had met hadn’t finished his classes, let alone passed the national exam. That hadn’t mattered. He’d been sincere and kind. Jim could trust sincere and kind. If he didn’t know everything, well, Jim needed someone with a clue. He’d settle for less than perfect. He’d had no idea how things would work out; maybe he didn’t care. He’d needed some kind of guide and Sandburg-for whatever reason-had wanted to *be* a guide. Even more incomprehensibly, he’d wanted to be *Jim’s* guide.

As it turned out, Sandburg hadn't just been well meaning, he'd been competent beyond Jim's wildest dreams. He made a bigger footprint in Jim's life than Lee had--he slept over almost nightly. His stuff kept creeping out of the spare room. His long hairs got everywhere, even into the clean laundry. But Jim didn't mind that so much. He sort of liked the guy.

Which, all right, maybe wasn't a good idea. The whole sentinel-guide relationship was way too complicated to make forming attachments anything but a disaster. Blair already held way too much power in his hands without Jim *liking* him, too. It would be as bad as trying to be friends with the department shrink. Worse. Wouldn't it?

It was hard though, sitting in this tiny cell with its distorting almost-transparent walls and the smell of suffering around him not to miss Sandburg.

There had been a night, not long after they'd started working together... they'd been eating pizza, and it had been great, because Jim hadn't even been near a pizza since April or May. But halfway through, everything went to hell. Out of nowhere Jim's throat started to swell, one of the things he really hated about the whole sentinel crap. It wasn't painful or visible--it hardly qualified as an inconvenience, really, when you compared it to, say, a really bad zone or depth perception turning inside out. But it was scary, because he never knew when it would end. Maybe it would just go on for an hour or two, irritating and bewildering and then go away. Or maybe it would keep getting worse, fast like lightening striking, and suddenly he'd be choking. It happened every once in a while, and Jim never knew just how bad it would get.

The worst part of it just then had been knowing that Sandburg was right there. He'd wanted the kid to have just a little respect for him, although given everything he'd seen so far, it was probably too late for that. He hadn't wanted to fall apart while Blair watched.

Not that Jim was expecting him to laugh or criticize. He knew he wasn't Lee. Despite Sandburg's careful dance trying not to set off the negative associations Jim might have about guides, Jim had known that they were nothing alike. But in Jim's experience, people confronted with the messy sides of being a sentinel responded with either pity or revulsion, and Jim hadn't been up for either.

But Sandburg hadn't seemed appalled. He'd just been a little worried. He took Jim into the bathroom and, well, even now, Jim didn't quite know what Sandburg had been doing. But when Jim questioned him about it, he'd been firmly told to cooperate and let Blair do his job. Jim had still been puzzled, but he'd been reassured, too. Nobody was giving him incomprehensible instructions or throwing up their hands in disgust. Or laughing. If things had gotten *bad* Jim wouldn't have to call for the ambulance himself. For that alone, Blair justified what the department paid him. Would be paying him. He didn't have the job yet. He hadn't passed that damn exam.

Blair had to pass that exam.

Of course, if Jim was shipped to South America in the next two or three days, it wouldn't really matter. At least, not to Jim.

Blair would be upset if Jim never reappeared. He was a little flaky about, say, where he put his keys (never in the same place twice, and never where he could find them on the first try the next morning) but the sentinel thing he took seriously. He saw Jim's safety as his personal responsibility, which was reassuring if the issue was just using the right dish soap and, yeah, touching, ok. But he'd feel bad about this too, and getting captured had been Jim's own screw up. What a mess.

Jim was thirsty, but he had finished his water, and the guard who usually sat on a chair in the corner across from Monk's cage had left shortly after switching Fraser's and Monk's waters and hadn't returned. The little prison had gone quiet again. To Jim's left, the women had fallen asleep, still leaning on the partition. Trying to touch each other. Blair was always saying how important touch was.

"Detective Ellison? I was wondering... that is, in your opinion... the room isn't, well, shrinking, is it?"

Jim sat up, suddenly alert. Fraser's voice was quiet and even, but something under the voice seemed taut, very close to breaking. "The walls are just the same," Jim answered, knowing it was inadequate. "Everything's fine."

"Ah. Yes. Just as I thought. Thank you."

"You have a problem with claustrophobia?" Jim asked carefully.

"No. Well, not exactly. Not small spaces. Just--confinement."

He had been here over two weeks. "It doesn't show."

"Well, no. I know it's all in my head. I mean, I am perfectly aware that we haven't, for example, been dropped in a hole and buried under tons of rubble. I know that the world outside this-box," his voice nearly broke, "still exists just the same. I can hear..."

"You can hear the birds," Jim whispered back.

"Yes. Sea gulls and terns. And song birds. Some species of starling, I think."

"You just have to hold it together. Everything is still out there. And they're looking for us. It won't be much longer now."

"Is that what he said?"

Jim blinked. "What who said?"

"Your wolf. Did he say they were coming?"

"My wolf?" Jim repeated stupidly, as though he had no idea what Fraser could be talking about.

"He was here a few hours ago. Do they know where we are?"

"No," Jim whispered leadenly. "They have no idea where we are. Blair was nearly frantic."

"Ah."

The silence stretched out, broken only by eight heartbeats, the soft rush of breathing, and the sounds of birds in the distance.

***

Afternoon sun was flooding Simon's office when the FBI sentinel nudged Blair awake and held out a Styrofoam cup of coffee. "Meeting in fifteen minutes."

Blair swung his feet down and sat up groggily. "Thanks. Any news?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry. You?"

Blair blinked, swallowed some of the coffee. "Uh, no."

The door opened and the FBI guide poked her head in. "Hey, Mulder? I just got the test results back on Mabry's body." Blair realized that her badge read "MD" as well as "AG(N)."

"Michelson's?" her partner asked.

"Probably not. There are some indications of increased immune activity, but nothing I can link to a direct cause of death. I did find extremely high levels of norepinephrine, cortisol, and CRH."

"Dangerous?"

"Not very. For someone who wasn’t a sentinel."

"Wait a minute," Blair protested. "You're saying he went toxic on his own fear? That doesn't actually happen."

"It's happened three times," she said, "that have been documented. At the moment, that's my best bet."

The FBI sentinel laughed at her. "You're reaching. You're so far out on a limb, squirrels are cheering."

"When you have a better idea, let me know."

"I did. It's Michelson's."

"I meant one with some actual support. There was no sign of--" They left, still arguing.

Blair set the coffee cup on the floor and rubbed his face with both hands. God, Jim. Jim. How awful could the situation be, if people were dying of fright? But Jim knew all about fear. He was used to coping. And he was a cop, he wouldn't just--

The FBI sentinel poked his head back in the door. "Hey? You coming?"

The meeting was in the big fourth floor conference room. About half of Major Crime was there, a bunch of feds in suits, and some captain from the State Police on the speaker-phone. The house had yielded some trace evidence, but it was all in analysis still. They had identified the truck using King's confession--they had the description and the plate, but no sign of it so far. They might have changed trucks by now, or run to ground. The good news was that the ship the kidnappers had been planning to use had been identified and was under surveillance, so the prisoners couldn't be taken out of the country that way, and they might even get them back, if the men holding them didn't panic and change plans.

The bad news was, another sentinel was missing. A doctor working in a suburban hospital had disappeared that morning between leaving home and arriving at work. There were no witnesses, no sign of her car.

Blair sat between the two Rays, staring at the battered conference table and feeling slightly sick. The coffee sloshed mockingly in his stomach, and Blair wondered when Jim had last eaten. God, they had just gotten him to put on a little weight.

The room tilted, and suddenly it was twice as crowded, packed with furry faces that made Blair think of a zoo or a Disney movie. Blair jumped, prevented from rising from the table by Veccio's chair wedged in on his left. Desperately, he looked around. Fox. Caribou. Horse. There, finally, crouched by the door, the big, dark cat. Jim. Blair tried to rise again, but his legs were unsteady, his stomach was trying to rebel, and the crowd of animals flowed away like water down a drain.

"You ok?" one of the Rays whispered, and Blair wanted to scream.

The other Ray answered, "He hasn't eaten since yesterday. As soon as this is over, we'll get him some food."

At the front of the room, the doctor FBI guide was arguing with the State Police captain about truck inspection procedures and the feasibility of roadblocks.

Something was pushed into Blair's hand, and obediently he ate. It was dry and hard, like leather, but fibrous and redolent of soy sauce. Blair chewed slowly--there was no other way--and by the time the meeting broke up his head was depressingly clear. Jim might be able to see animals all the time, but clearly Blair had to work at it. He should have been fasting deliberately.

Yeah. No more food. And he'd stop sleeping.

As cops of every variety strode past them, Ray Kowalski pointed at the remains in Blair's hand. "What is that?"

"Turkey jerky," Ray Veccio said shortly.

"You're kidding."

"No. I go everywhere with desiccated meat."

Miserably, Blair got to his feet and headed for the door. He almost bumped into the FBI sentinel standing in his way. "Excuse me," Blair muttered.

Mulder gently caught his arm. "What did you see?"

"It doesn't matter."

He leaned closer urgently. "It matters."

"They didn't tell me anything. It doesn’t matter."

"Mr. Sandburg. Blair--"

"This isn't some cool thing. It's not another story for your collection. It's not *interesting*. Those people are dying. Jim--" Blair pulled his arm free and fled. It wasn't that he didn't understand: this sentinel was looking for meaning, truth, something with a purpose. But Blair's only purpose was finding Jim, and--although he knew he wasn't quite rational--everybody else could take their priorities and go to hell.

***

"Tell me about your guide," Jim said, hoping to keep the conversation going. When the stillness went on too long, Fraser's heart rate tended to climb. Around them, most of the others were awake, but they had fallen into a blunted, hopeless silence. At this point, most of them didn't have much left to say to one another.

"He's a good man," Fraser said slowly. "He doesn't always think so, but he's a good man. Over the last couple of years, I've asked much more of him than he could ever.... That's not a criticism. I mean, given his background, I could hardly expect.... Well, could I?"

"Uh, no," Jim said, having no idea what he was talking about. That might be his own fault. He'd only gotten about three hours' sleep before waking to Cindy beside him restlessly pacing her tiny cage.

"But you know, he never condemned me and he never pushed me away." For a moment, Jim thought he smelled tears, but everything had reeked of tears since he'd gotten here. "Besides which, he never let the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about sentinels stop him from being a guide. I have to respect that."

Toward the front, Mark roused himself to say, "And people wonder why the Canadians have such lousy statistics."

"We consider the relationship personal, and not a matter for government supervision."

"I think Sandburg might be with them," Jim said. "Your people." Mentioning Blair made something burn behind his eyes. There were things he wanted to say to Blair, things he couldn't think about in this place.

"They'll take care of him. They're good men, both of them. Well, except that neither one of them has a clue about nutrition. They'll feed Diefenbaker anything. He's getting fat on donuts...." Fraser trailed off sadly. It took Jim a moment to remember that Diefenbaker was the wolf.

Voices outside gave them only a moment's warning before the doors of the truck clanged open and made all of them wince. Doug was back, pushing a woman ahead of him. She was very tall and very dark skinned, very beautiful--and she smelled very clean. There was fury and contempt in her eyes, not fear. Doug opened an empty cell on the other side of the truck and shoved her in.

Speaking so softly that their captors couldn't hear, Fraser made brief introductions and explained what was going on. The missing sentinels were all over the news, she said, and raised her voice to add, "Five states and two countries are looking for them. Everyone's wondering who could be stupid enough to think any of this could work."

Doug ignored her. He opened the foot-square slot at the bottom of each cell and passed in water, dry granola, and clean sheets, and exchanged the full waste receptacles for new ones. He worked his way slowly up the aisle, snapping at the prisoners to hurry.

When he came to Jim's cell, Jim was ready, holding the full jar. When he held it out, though, he didn't hand it over. He dropped it and snagged Doug's arm instead. He had a good, solid grip, and though Doug tried to heave himself away, Jim overbalanced him and slammed his head into the plexiglas barrier.

It should have been a shocking blow, but the plexiglas was more bounce than blunt instrument. They struggled for a moment, then Doug's other hand came forward. There was a hiss. A scalding pain soaked the sweatshirt they'd dressed him in and burned his arm--it felt like to the bone. The air was suddenly scalding too, and Jim staggered backward, unable to see, unable to breathe.

Just when he'd been sure things couldn't get worse.

Cursing himself, shutting his eyes on the vicious sting, Jim groped for Doug. Too late, of course. He'd lost his hold already. One arm was on fire. The air was on fire, too, making him gag and choke. Damn. Damn.

What would Sandburg tell him? Get his mind off the problem by focusing somewhere else. A lot easier said than done, especially without a guide here to talk him through it. But he could cope with this. He could. It was just a little overload. Sight was out, so was touch, but he should be able to focus on hearing. Could he hear anything at all?

Yes? He could hear a lot of yelling. And crying somewhere. The snap of a bolt being slammed back.

Hands were on him. They stripped off the sweatshirt and hauled him across the cold floor. More yelling. More burning. Every breath hurt and he had to force himself to try.

Hands were on him, light, gentle. Somehow he registered another sentinel. "Detective Ellison?" Fraser's voice. "As bad as things feel right now, everything is under control. Dr. Morton is right here. You just need to hang in there for a while."

Small, fast hands pinned his arm and water sluiced over it. Water--it must be water, he told himself. It felt like acid dissolving his flesh. Jim gasped, but there was no air. Behind his eyes, the world turned red and then gray.

"Losing blood pressure," Fraser murmured.

The doctor snarled deep in her throat and snapped, "He's going into shock. There's swelling. Your moron may have just killed him. Do you have--" But Jim couldn't follow what she was saying. The grayness surrounded him now, it was in his ears, in his head, blocking out the pain on his skin. Dying. Jim fought for another breath; one thing at time. Nevermind the pain, just live.

Less than three months ago he'd been *waiting* to die, he'd gotten comfortable with the idea, and now--now--when he was finally starting to get the sentinel thing to work for him, now the senses were going to kill him? No way. Slowly, he got another breath in.

Pain in the other arm. Like a serrated knife going in. An injection of something? "Ak--" it wasn't what Jim meant to say.

For a long time there was only grayness and breathing. When the world began to impinge again nobody was close to him. The burning had faded to an enveloping sting. He was on a thin mattress, not the one he'd been on before. There was a blanket, but he was still cold. He could hear the sentinels around him, but they weren't speaking.

Outside the truck things weren’t so quiet. "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

"It was just pepper spray!"

"You fucking idiot!" A thud, the grind of bone.

"I have a right to defend myself!"

"Alive, that sentinel is worth three million dollars. Dead, he's not worth anything." Another thud, this time a crack as bones broke. "You're not worth anything dead *or* alive."

The ceiling above Jim's head was a gray blur, but because he was having trouble focusing and compensating for the darkness, not because his vision had shut down completely. Across the narrow aisle, Cindy started to cry again. Outside, the beating went on. Jim breathed; that was still taking a little work on his part.

Sandburg would have a fit. He was a stickler for rules. Pepper spray wasn't on the approved list. Hell, it was completely illegal in four states because sentinels couldn't handle it. Sandburg would have a fit.

It had taken a few days to get used to that, Sandburg's anger. But unlike Lee's temper and impatience, Sandburg's anger was nothing to be afraid of. He was all bark and no bite, or, at least, teeth had never closed on Jim. Even when he wasn't walking on egg shells, obviously worried that he might set off some baggage Jim was carrying from his last guide, Sandburg went out of his way to be patient and encouraging. Even when he was angry, he repeated again and again that whatever was wrong wasn't Jim's fault.

It was almost funny, how gentle this neo-hippie, pacifist graduate student was with a veteran cop who outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. This time last year, Jim would have thought he was the last person to need it.

Aw, god, Chief. Jim managed another breath. He was going to have to hold things together by himself for a little longer. He could do this, even without Blair. He could keep it together. He could.

The truck started up. They were moving again. Not much speed, but the road twisted. A minor highway, Jim guessed. He didn't know which. The jarring made him slightly nauseated.

***

Blair was driving in hopeless circles with the Ray contingent when the call they were all waiting for finally came. Veccio was explaining what one of the best sentinels on the RCMP payroll was doing being farmed out hither, thither, and yon to the yanks. Apparently he'd exposed some kind of serious corruption involving his superiors and was persona non grata up north. "I have to wonder just how pissed they were, you know what I mean? 'Suggesting' he stay in Chicago? Up until that point, his biggest assignment was Moose Ass--"

"Moose Jaw," Kowalski corrected.

"And he had to be transferred out for stress in a month." He shook his head. "Chicago."

"I don't wonder," Kowalski said. "He'd be dead if he hadn't found a guide."

"Might have been nice if he'd actually told me--"

The police scanner Veccio had set up on the dash announced that the State Police had the truck--license number confirmed--in sight. It was refusing to pull over, heading north on Old Highway Seven, back-up requested.

It turned out that Veccio drove like a maniac. It wasn't the speed that Blair found shocking, actually. After all, Jim drove fairly fast when they were on the way to a scene. It was the way the Toyota fishtailed around corners and the way Kowalski shouted conflicting advice from the passenger seat.

Even with all of this speed, they weren't going fast enough. "Sandburg, is Route 3 a shortcut?"

"No, take Bird Road. Up here, on the left!"

Kowalski was trying to read a map while being repeatedly tossed against his seat belt. "Did she say they were up at Winston Point already? We're never going to make it!"

*"Suspect vehicle is exiting Old Seven heading for the Mumford Bridge."*

"Oh, crap," Blair yelled. "We do want Route 3!"

The Toyota swung wildly as Ray aborted his turn and nearly missed a minivan. Diefenbaker bounced into Blair's lap. "Where the hell is Route 3?"

"Up there, on the left, on the left! Not the gas station!" Kowalski hollered.

With another of those horrible swerves, they were blasting north on Route 3, a four-lane highway with a low median. Blair realized he was holding his breath. Up ahead, he could see three police cars, lights flashing.

*"Suspect vehicle has entered Route 3, southbound; repeat, southbound."*

Southbound. Blair was excited and terrified at the same time. Veccio pulled into the lefthand lane and flew past the other cars until he was just behind the police. Blair counted four black-and-whites and a dark sedan covered with antennas that had to be the feds.

The chatter on the radio was almost continuous and in some kind of shorthand Blair didn't understand. He had no warning when three cars, sirens screaming, roared past on the other side, and the cops in front of them suddenly jumped the median into the southbound lanes and Ray followed. The world spun horribly and then slammed to a stop.

Blair spit out a mouthful of wolf fur and looked. Beyond the scattered cop-cars, the highway was clear, except for a huge eighteen-wheeler bearing down on them from the bottom of a small grade.

Blair was surprised. He would have thought a moment like that would stretch out into forever. It was the kind of thing, he thought fleetingly, that *ought* to be in slow motion. But he had hardly blinked before he heard the tires of the truck screaming--and then it was stopped.

The silence was awful. Blair blinked. Ahead of him, the cops were out of their cars, leaning over roofs and over hoods with their guns pointed. The truck was at a slight angle, bent a little at the junction where the tractor met the trailer. Beyond the truck, the pursuing cop cars were also scattered like tacks across the highway. There would be men on the other sides of those cars, too, and they would have guns.

Please, Blair thought. Please let it be ok.

The Rays were out of the car. Blair disentangled himself from the seatbelt and the wolf and crept out after them. Veccio nodded once and caught Blair's shoulder, hauling him up to the next car.

The silence continued, then someone ahead shouted, "Hold your fire!" and the passenger door of the truck opened. A man got out--unremarkable with brown hair and a brown suit--and walked slowly around to face the cops who had pursued him.

He said something Blair couldn't hear, but the FBI sentinel crouched at the car ahead of them repeated, "We all know you can only send me to the chair once, so we don't have a lot to lose." A pause. "We have nine very valuable hostages and very few options. You have five minutes to get rid of the road block and release our ship, or my man in the back of the truck starts shooting the sentinels one at a time, starting with the locals."

Someone stood up from behind a State Police car and answered by bullhorn: "No deals."

"You don't have much choice. If those sentinels die, you'll lose the confidence of--"

The rear doors of the truck slammed open to the sound of screaming. For a moment nobody moved, everyone straining to see what was going on, and then a single figure flew--apparently from the back of the truck--in an awkward arc and landed sloppily on the center line. Blair had an impression of stockiness and maleness and red hair, but it was hard to tell; the figure was still trying to crawl away on its belly.

For a second more the cops sheltered by the ring of cars were still, and then the man who'd gotten out of the cab started to run. The police swarmed over him like bees descending on a hive.

The first gunshot sounded like a little pop, and for a second Blair couldn't tell where it came from. Then he saw another man running away from the cab of the truck. He was trying to get across the road to the trees beside the highway, and he was firing--Pop. Pop.-- into the roadblock.

A dozen guns close at hand returned fire with a roar that sounded like cannons and the man staggered and went down. There was a moment's pause, and then the collected law enforcement troops, still with their guns drawn, began to close on the truck.

It was mayhem. The highway was shut down in both directions, but the sirens of more police came slowly up the median, followed by ambulances and then by a camera team on foot.

Blair tried to get closer, but he was separated from the Rays and he'd left his department ID in his backpack back in the car. The State Police wouldn't let him get any closer than thirty feet.

The police cuffed and removed the first man who'd left the cab of the truck, then the man who'd gone tumbling from the rear. The second man wasn't bleeding, but he had livid bruises on his face and he offered no resistance. In fact, he seemed hardly aware of the arresting officers at all as they led him away.

From his place a huge distance away, Blair watched Adrian Monk climb slowly down from the truck and into Sharona's arms. After him, a tall, dark-haired man who Blair recognized as the Canadian. Both Rays closed on him and hustled him away from the crowd.

Police, rescue workers--nobody moving fast or being loud, made a steady stream in and out of the truck. Every once in a while a figure in gray sweats would be helped out of the truck, sometimes on a stretcher. The glimpses of haggard, pale people Blair saw hardly matched the pictures of the missing sentinels he'd been staring at for days.

He counted eight. None of them was Jim.

The FBI sentinel appeared at the mouth of the truck. His eyes fastened on Blair at once. "Mr. Sandburg?"

Blair ran, terrified, pushing past the State Police man even as he stepped out of the way. Agent Mulder reached down to give him a hand into the truck. "He's fine. He just wants to talk to you first."

Blair managed to nod, managed not to scream and scrambled up.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden dimness. The arrangement of cages was familiar. So was the smell, although it wasn't so strong now that it wasn't being filtered through Jim. Blair swallowed.

Jim was in a narrow cage, halfway up the cargo box on the left. He was sitting on a thin mat, his back to the wall behind him and his knees drawn up. He was shirtless and huddled under a blanket. Slowly--because he was afraid, not because he had any strength left to worry about Jim's response--Blair crept up the central aisle and stepped into Jim's cell.

"Hey, Chief," Jim whispered hoarsely. He tried to smile. "Did you remember to get eggs?" He broke off, shuddering, panting, and Blair dropped to his knees and fumbled for Jim's hands. "I'm... I'm ok, Chief."

Blair clung, relief making his eyes fog. Thank you, god, he was thinking, but he could only nod his head silently.

"I just didn't want to embarrass myself out there, you know?"

"I know. It's ok." Blair laughed and hugged him. He replaced the blanket which had slipped and rested his forehead against Jim's temple. "It's ok."

"Out," Jim said. "Please."

Blair stood and then pulled Jim up after him. For a moment Blair just blinked at him before trying to remember how to be a guide and smiling reassuringly. Jim clung to his arm as they made their way down the aisle. At the opening, Blair kept eye contact as he detached himself and went down first, then reached out to brace Jim as he climbed down. Jim turned into Blair's arms and rested against him. Even that small exertion had left him breathless. They were still until an EMT approached and Jim flinched away. Blair shook his head.

"Blair?"

"Hey, Joel," Blair said. Joel and Simon had stopped a good ten feet away and were looking on fearfully.

"We're out of ambulances. It'll be a few minutes before more get here. How about I just take you to the clinic in my car?"

Blair glanced at Jim, who nodded. "Sure, Joel. Clinic?"

"Across the street from Memorial. The FBI made arrangements for the sentinels to be examined someplace quiet first."

"That's good. We'll do that." He glanced up at Jim, squinting in the late afternoon sunlight and put an arm around his waist. "Close your eyes. It's all right." He guided Jim through the bustle of emergency personnel to Joel's car. It was a dark sedan, not the SUV with "Bomb Squad" on the side. Blair slid into the back seat and, one hand on Jim's head, guided him in after.

For a minute, Blair wasn't sure what to do. Jim looked like hell. He was gaunt and exhausted. His eyes weren't quite tracking, even within the shadows of the car. His breathing stuttered a little, as though he were trying not to cough.

"Blair--"

"I'm here, I'm here." He began a guide check, running his hands over Jim's skull, his face.

"I dreamed you came."

Blair's hands froze. "It wasn't a dream."

"I... I know."

Blair slid his hands under the blanket. He kept his touch light, but still Jim winced when he grazed the upper arms. "What?" He pushed the blanket aside to look.

"Injection. Cortisone, maybe."

"Why?"

Jim held out his other arm.

A deep red welt two inches wide stretched from just above Jim's wrist to the elbow.

"What happened?" Blair asked, almost choking on the knowledge that no words Jim gave him could convey 'what' had happened.

"Pepper spray."

"Wh--what? Why?"

"Stupid," Jim muttered. He closed his eyes, and Blair didn’t ask for more.

"It's gonna be ok. Capsaicin poisoning doesn't bring on a generalized allergic reaction. Once the initial exposure is over, it won't get worse. You're going to be ok."

Jim nodded. Blair wondered how bad the 'initial exposure' had been. He squeezed Jim's hand. "It's going to be ok."

"I can't feel it."

"The wound? That's ok. That's normal. Your body's taking care of you. We'll get the feeling back later, if it forgets to come on its own." It was ok. It was all ok.

Blair didn't notice the trip, didn’t realize they had arrived until Joel said, "Wait. I'll help you get him out." Inside the clinic, they were shown to a small examining room and left alone.

Jim sat sideways on the examining table, his legs dangling, his head down. He shivered a little, and Blair adjusted the blanket. God, he was such a crappy guide. His sentinel was in trouble, and it was all Blair could do not to cry all over him. He ought to be helping somehow. Not standing here uselessly. God. Angela had been right all along. Blair had no business--

Jim's hand snaked out and caught Blair's wrist, an automatic gesture Blair recognized, one that was usually followed by a slightly-surprised noticing of the action and a firm release. Even after nearly three months, Jim was uncomfortable about the idea of touching his guide. He'd gotten over being apologetic about it, and if they were working or if Blair initiated it he didn't resist, but it still didn't seem natural.

This time, though, Jim lifted Blair's arm and held it with both hands. Tightly. Blair put his free arm around Jim's shoulders. "Cindy's mom's not here yet," Jim said suddenly. "She's freaking. Zoe's trying to calm her down."

"Zoe?"

"Zoe O'Malley." One of the search and rescue sentinels.

"Jim, should you be listening to this?" Jim had enough stress on his own, without every other sentinel's distress pouring into his ears.

"They don't mind. Everybody knows everybody's listening."

Of course. They had been listening to each other for days, some of them for weeks. God. Blair knew absolutely nothing about the dynamics of sentinels in groups. Nobody deployed more than one at a time. Almost never. Who could afford it? There weren't enough anyway, even if you could afford to pay them. So there was no data on adult sentinel interaction, not anywhere.

What would they say to each other? Feel toward each other?

"They're admitting Adrian. Dehydration. He's not too thrilled with that, but Sharona's not letting him argue."

Blair held Jim a little tighter. Things could be a lot worse.

The door to the examining room cracked open and Ray Kowalski timidly poked his head in. "Uh, Blair? Ray wanted some advice?"

Blair looked up, took a deep breath. "Yeah. Sure." His arms were still tight around Jim.

Kowalski swallowed. "He's got this rash? On his back? Like big rings made out of smaller rings? Ben says it's no biggie, but Ray's never seen anything like it. Not in person."

Blair swallowed. "How big?"

Kowalski held out his hands, palms side-by-side. "Yea big." He frowned. "He doesn't scratch it. He says it hurts."

Blair relaxed. "Take him someplace that feels safe. Get him in his own clothes and on his regular diet. Have him drink lots of water. Use whatever topical ointment usually works and cold compresses."

Kowalski and Jim didn't look any more reassured, and Blair knew they were still thinking of Welles' autopsy pictures. "Fraser isn't a touchy sentinel. It isn't going to be like that. When was the last time he was in the hospital?" Blair was willing to bet at least five years.

"There was a stabbing," Kowalski said slowly. "And about two years ago Ray shot him."

"That a Canadian guide technique?" Blair asked. When Kowalski only blinked, he realized it hadn't been a joke.

Jim said softly, "He says he was hospitalized twice in--Moose Jaw?--and that thing with the toxic waste dumping. But that was it for the senses. Nothing else."

Blair managed a thin smile. "See? Not touchy." Almost inhumanly so. "He'll be fine."

Ray disappeared, closing the door after him.

"Warm enough?"

Jim nodded. Blair pulled him closer. "Soon," he promised.

The door opened and the FBI guide bustled in, snatching a pair of gloves from a dispenser on the wall. "They're a little short-handed, so I thought I'd help out. If that's all right with you, Mr. Sandburg."

On the one hand, she was a fed, and while the FBI's sentinel program wasn’t as pitiless as, say, the army's or the CIA's, Blair didn't quite trust it either. On the other hand, even Jim's doctor wasn't an AG(N) as well as an MD. And it had the added attraction of getting them out sooner. "It's up to Jim," he said.

Jim nodded.

She took his blood pressure and temperature, then tilted back his head to look into his eyes. "I hear there was an attack with pepper spray?"

"Two of the others touched me--Fraser and, ah, Rachel--"

"Minor, secondary exposure. They both have enough experience to handle it." Jim winced and glanced at Blair, who had moved out of the doctor's way but was still holding his hand.

The doctor listened for a long time to Jim's chest. "Your breathing getting better, or worse?" she asked him.

"Better."

Frowning, she continued her examination. She found a camera in one of the cabinets lining the room and took a picture of Jim's arm. Then she smeared something white on the raw welt and wrapped it in gauze. "Leave this alone for about 24 hours, then nothing stronger than aloe, ok, Blair?"

He nodded.

"I don't have to tell you to watch him," she said.

"No," Blair whispered. "I'll watch him."

"The police will want a statement. Tell them to wait; take him home and get him clean and in his own clothes."

It seemed to take forever, but at last she finished the exam and Blair was leading Jim out into the waiting room. Joel was still there--Joel who had always been kind to Jim--and Blair felt a wave of relief.

Before they made it to the door, though, the doctor's partner stepped casually in front of them. "Everything all right?" he asked politely.

"Yes, thank you," Blair said.

"The case looks pretty good, so far. I thought you'd want to know. The only minor glitch I see at this point is that the gentleman who was so anxious to exit the truck seems to be trying for 'mental incapacity.'"

He was talking to Jim, but Blair said quickly, "I'm sure everything will be fine," and tried to nudge his partner toward the safety of Joel standing by the door.

Jim stayed still, gazing levelly at Agent Mulder. "How interesting."

"He claims to be hallucinating. Wild animals; claws, big teeth, that sort of thing." There was nothing at all urgent in his voice, no loaded looks behind his friendly eyes.

Jim shrugged. "I bet that would be very stressful."

"I wouldn't worry about it. There isn't a judge alive stupid enough to fall for that."

"If there's nothing else, Agent Mulder, I'd like to take my partner home," Blair said tightly.

"Of course. Excuse me." He stepped politely out of the way.

Blair led Jim to the door, trying not to run.

Epilogue:

A dog was barking, fighting for scraps behind the House of Hunan on the next street. For a few moments Jim froze, reminding himself with the smell of his own sheets and the sound of Blair's light snoring that he was home.

Home. Not a dream. Really home.

By the time Blair had gotten Jim bathed and re-examined and settled on the couch (not a simple task when they had needed to keep the dressing on his arm dry and all Jim wanted to do was sleep anyway) Simon had shown up with a pizza, a six-pack of beer, and a tight, worried smile that belied his claims that he was *not* checking up on Jim.

Surprised at how hungry he was, Jim had jumped on the pizza. He downed six pieces one after another, not really listening as Simon and Blair rehashed the case. It was like the food was some kind of drug--the slide of grease on his tongue, the way the crust began to sweeten as he chewed it, the way the seasonings popped, one at a time, to the top of his perception. Basil. Oregano. Rosemary. The flavors rotated between delicious to mildly unpleasant, but it was completely absorbing, and he shoved the pieces in one after another. He must have fallen asleep after that, because he couldn't remember Simon leaving, just Blair coaxing him upstairs.

That must have been hours ago. It was very dark now and mostly quiet. All that pizza felt like lead in his stomach. Jim lay still, shivering, for a moment, then slipped out of bed and crept quietly downstairs. When he nudged Blair, he roused immediately--if not completely. "Jim?" he muttered. "You ok, man?"

Jim was unsure. "Yeah," he said cautiously.

"No pain?"

"No. I'm ok."

"Good. Good, ok. Go back to sleep."

Right. It was the middle of the night. What was he doing? Jim turned toward the door.

"Jim." Not loud, but definitely more awake, and Jim felt acutely guilty. Blair had had a hell of a day on Jim's behalf and the poor kid hadn't even cleared firearms testing yet.

"I'm fine, Sandburg. Go back to sleep."

"No. Come here." Reluctantly, Jim turned around. Blair patted the bed and, meekly, Jim came and sat. "You ok?"

"Yeah. I'm fine."

Blair sat up and folded his feet under himself. "You breathing ok?"

"Yeah. Chief, I don't know--"

"Shhh." Blair laid his fingertips on the top of Jim's head and started doing that after-action exterior exam that guides apparently defaulted to when they were stressed. Even with the 'light duty' Jim had been working in the absence of the full-time supervision of an accredited guide, they'd wound up doing this about once a week. Sometimes the examination provided a necessary couple of minutes Jim could use to collect himself when the senses were freaked out. Usually, though, it was just another thing to put up with.

This time the light touch was very reassuring. Blair's fingertips somehow reoriented Jim, reminding him of just where he was in relation to the rest of the world.

Settling. Focusing. 'You are here,' the touch said. 'You are ok, and your boundaries are safe.' Jim swallowed hard. He remembered, vaguely, that there was something he didn't like about all this touching being a sentinel seemed to involve. He couldn't remember what.

Blair completed the check and then went to the top of Jim's head and started again. Fingers ghosted over his face and neck, clearly no longer searching for injury. 'I'm right here,' the hands said this time. 'You matter to me.'

Jim said a little desperately, "They prepare you for this in guide school?"

"Shockingly, Jack never mentioned your partner getting used as bait." His voice shook and Jim felt horrible. It felt unfair to take Blair's friendship as well his competence. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Blair's hands stilled. "Jim?"

A gulf seemed to open beneath Jim's feet. "Oh, god, Sandburg. Everything's fucked up. I never wanted to be a freak."

The hands stilled, then pulled Jim into a hug he didn't have the strength to pretend was unnecessary. "What the hell are you talking about?" Blair asked gently.

"I don't--god, I don't even know. I just feel--so ashamed and so angry. I--I don’t know."

"Yeah. Ok. Just keep talking."

"There was something... those other sentinels. Like me. I mean, I knew a couple in the army, sort of...."

"Not a good place to start."

"And Monk. I mean talk about scary. Oh, god."

"He's a special case, Jim. Really unusual."

"But Kathy and Mark and Zoe are just people, with lives and they're not... they're not freaks." It felt dirty to even say the word in relation to them.

"Of course not--Uh. Jim, did, did Lee--?" Blair swallowed hard and forged on gently, "Is this more of his toxic bullshit?"

"No. No...."

"Where is this coming from?"

Jim shook his head. He didn't know. Sighing, Blair guided Jim down until they were lying beside one another on the futon. There wasn't quite room, and Blair wound up on his side, wedged between Jim's shoulder and the wall. "I don't... I don't know what to do right now, Jim. But we're both really tired. Look, is it enough if I just promise you that everything is ok? There's nothing wrong with you and you're not--you're *not*, ok? You're home and everybody's safe and it's all going to be ok."

They didn't talk any more, although it was a long time before either of them got to sleep.

***

For a moment Ray wasn’t sure whether it was morning or not. But nope. The glow splashing in through the balcony doors was only a reflection of Cascade’s light pollution. Shivering, he slid from between the sheets and snagged his faded fleece jacket from the back of a chair. The sliding glass doors were already about a third of the way open, explaining why the room was so cold. He crept to the threshold and looked down.

He could make out Kowalski, awake and uncomfortable in the corner. The lump beside him might be Ben's head. Or it might be part of Diefenbaker. Ray nudged Kowalski with his toe. "Switch," he whispered.

Kowalski started to shake his head and Ray scowled at him. "Get some sleep. It's my turn. It's only fair."

Slowly, carefully, and still looking doubtful, Kowalski slid out from under the blankets. Shivering, Ray took his place. His legs wouldn't quite stretch out, and Dief grumbled as Ray nudged him sideways. Damn. Ben, sleeping in a tight ball, wiggled over to press the back of his head into Ray's thigh. It would be at least three days before they would be able to coax him back inside onto the floor, let alone into a real bed. Sighing inwardly at the fact that he was never, ever, going to figure out his life, Ray gave Kowalski a thumbs up and sank back into the pillow that cushioned the base of the rungs of the banister behind him.

It was cold and damp, and Ray was grateful for the wolf cuddled against his feet. That part of him was, at least, warm. After more than four years with Nanook of the North, he still didn't like the cold, still hated to sleep outside. It would be nice if he did like those things, since he would probably retire to North Nowhere, Canada when it was all over. Maybe he could get hypnosis or something.

Fraser stirred. "Where's Stan?" he mumbled.

"In bed. Sleeping. Like normal people," Ray grumbled good naturedly back. "Can you hear him?"

"No." Ben's hearing, like the rest of his senses, tested out as barely over the line separating sentinels from everyone else. It was how he processed the data he received that made him such a 'phenomenon' in two countries.

"It's ok. He's fine. Go back to sleep."

"Thanks, Ray."

Ben was already asleep again. Ray turned over and pressed their backs together for warmth. He might not get any sleep out here, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

***

Mulder opened the adjoining door without knocking. "I could have been doing something personal," Dana said, not looking up from the computer cradled in her lap.

"You'd turn the white noise generator on."

"What if I forgot?"

"You never forget." He would be smiling that charming, innocent smile that would melt her heart and make her want to slap him. Instead of looking, Dana turned to dig through the pile of medical reports on the rescued sentinels that were on the bed beside her. He sighed and gave up trying to be cute. "Any chance we can leave tomorrow?"

"I don't know. There's a lot to tie up here. Why?"

"There's a rain of frogs in Chattanooga."

"Oh, not another rain of frogs. The last three were just--"

"This time they landed in some congressman's mother's backyard. He's calling out the EPA. Scully. We can't let the EPA--"

She shook her head. "Anyway, we're scheduled for some down time."

"*Don't* go all 'guide' on me."

"That's my job."

"You're a federal agent. Your job is to find the truth."

She sighed. "Come here."

For just a second he almost smiled, showing that he knew he was gaining ground. He came over and sat beside her on the bed while Dana closed the computer and set it aside. She took his hand, an intimacy they never indulged unless they were alone. They were silent for a moment and then he released a tiny sigh. "I want the truth, Mulder. Are you ok?"

"I'm good. I promise." His physiological control was amazing, even for sentinels. Once, on a bet while he was in training, he'd slowed his heart down, made his blood pressure undetectable, and held his breath for six minutes. When he was tired, though, or after extended stress, all the pinpoint control disappeared. His vital signs swung wildly with every change in mood or attention. When he was overworked he zoned, although normally he could scan with two senses concurrently and carry on a conversation. Dana's rules about time off were very strict, but Mulder was very good at being able to talk her into extensions.

Sometimes into too many extensions, and she would wind up half-carrying him out of a crime scene, hating both of them for being idiots.

He smiled an innocent, charming smile that made her want to hit him. "Please. It's a rain of frogs. Non-native species, did I mention that?"

Dana rolled her eyes. "Sleep late tomorrow and I'll think about it."

"We have to be at the federal building at 8:30."

"You'll come in at noon. If everything goes ok, we'll leave for Chattanooga on Thursday. Ok?"

"Ok!"

"Now, go to bed."

"Gone, gone." He shut the door behind him.

***

It wasn't insomnia, Jack told himself. It was jet lag. In Cascade it was only just after midnight, not just after one. He often stayed up till midnight.

He shuffled the printouts spread out on the table. Had he broken down cause of death by age of guide? No. Damn. He didn’t expect to find a relationship, but he needed to rule it out.

He didn't hear Marcia come up behind him--she was always as silent as a cat--but he knew she was there just the same. He held out a hand, and she came forward and took it. "Nightmare again?" he asked.

"No. They've stopped. Even when I try, I can't see them."

"See what?" and then, "The animals?"

She nodded, and her hair, which she had never kept long when they were in the game, swung hypnotically. She'd changed a great deal in the ten years since they'd met.

"One of my students... his sentinel was seeing animals. I'll have to ask if they've stopped when we get back to Cascade."

"Maybe animal sightings correlate with sunspots," she teased, smiling a little. Her migraines correlated with sunspots, a mystery Jack had solved in three months. Her previous guide had castigated her for goldbricking for three years.

"Nothing's random," he said softly. "Nothing's meaningless. Everything can be figured out." He didn't add 'and made better,' but the promise hovered between them. It might be a false promise; the hand Jack held was hot. She was still feverish, despite the fact that Jack had medicated her as much as he dared. The doctor in Estes Park hadn’t been able to find any signs of infection, but he was hardly a specialist in sentinels. There might be something... He pushed the thought aside. Marcia wasn't as sharp as she used to be, but she still might smell his heartbreak and that wouldn't exactly be encouraging. "Hungry?" he asked. "How about some warm milk?"

***

It was past one when Jim finally turned on his side and fell asleep with his head pressed against Blair's chest. Blair nearly sighed aloud. Instead, he let one arm gently drape over Jim's shoulders. He'd known Jim had major issues. It just turned out that there were major issues in addition to the ones he *knew* about.

No, it shouldn't be a surprise. Lots of effort went into making sure that little sentinel children turned out well-adjusted and comfortable with themselves. But of course people who were *not* sentinels, who didn't really know anything *about* sentinels would have weird ideas about it. Jim had had thirty-two years to learn god knew what.

'What must he think of me,' Blair thought. 'So comfortable with this. So eager, even.' But Jim probably hadn't given it much thought. Sleeping and eating and breathing took up the biggest chunk of his energy.

Which was a shame. It could be a good life. There were dozens of examples. There was a lot to enjoy, once you'd learned a few techniques for dealing with chaos and pain. Jim was strong and durable. They could make this work, he knew it. He closed his eyes and sighed.

-End-


End file.
